


The Thinnest Veil

by Estraeven



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Sciles Big Bang 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:20:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4186587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estraeven/pseuds/Estraeven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now in the their sophomore year of college at the prestigious Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, Scott and Stiles, along with their new friends, Qiana, Rosa, and Shin, work together to solve a mystery at their university involving strange whispers heard in the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [ easyminds ](http://easyminds.tumblr.com) for the cover art!

** **

 

**Chapter One**

_Scott_

_“…fm’latgh ebumna vulgtlagln… nyth culn shugg cstell’bsna kadishtu… phlegeth cgotha ee kadishtu kn’aa,”_ whispered a cacophony of voices, dissimilar from one another yet distinct in sharing a guttural tone utterly unfamiliar to Scott. The same fragments of speech repeated over and over again in his mind, causing him to toss and turn in his bed, slipping in and out of consciousness.

Despite his want and will to sleep soundly that night, the voices, or rather the effect of them, rose in intensity over time, becoming harder and harder to ignore. Eventually, the haunting chorus peaked at an almost deafening intensity, causing Scott to bolt upright in his bed, waking from a nightmare he surely wouldn’t forget.

“Ugh, great,” Scott muttered, as he laid his head back down onto his pillow rather forcefully. He attempted to drift back into slumber for several minutes, but it was to no avail. Briefly glancing at his phone, he saw that it was already about five o’clock.

Might as well get up then, he thought, as he decided to get out of bed and start the day. Drowsily walking towards the bathroom, he was thankful that he shared the bathroom with only three other students this year, so it was unlikely that any of them would be using it at this hour. He entered the bathroom, quickly brushed his teeth, and got in the shower, making sure that the water wasn’t too warm, because as much as he enjoyed the soothing relaxation of a hot shower, he still wasn’t fully awake yet, and passing out in the shower was definitely not part of his game plan for the day.

After Scott finished his shower, which made him feel much livelier than before, he stood in front of the mirror for a few minutes, making sure his hair was at least somewhat presentable. Lately, his preferred hairstyle was just to let his hair fall down naturally on his forehead without the use of any products, though he kept it noticeably shorter than he had in his early teens. At first, he had been resistant to this change, but two of his current group of friends, Rosa Herrera and Qiana Williams, had assured him that it was the right decision.

Unfortunately for them, Stiles was as stubborn with his styling choices as he was with many things, so he still rocked his gelled tips with pride. Scott didn’t push him on it though, he enjoyed his boyfriend’s full head of hair, both in appearance and in feel, and wouldn’t want him to go back to the buzz cut he had had until their junior year of high school. Stiles was, after all, prone to making such all-or-nothing decisions.

Once he finished brushing and combing his hair, Scott exited the bathroom and put on a blue, long-sleeved shirt and light brown pants. It still felt strange to him to wear anything but t-shirts and shorts at this time of year, a daily reminder that he wasn’t in California anymore. Not that he disliked the colder, more varying weather of Arkham, Massachusetts overmuch; he just missed the sunshine and warmth of fall in Beacon Hills. But, Miskatonic University had offered him and Stiles great scholarships and was a prestigious school in its own right, so he really couldn’t have refused.

Man, it’s not even six yet, Scott thought, disappointed that he had only managed to kill about forty minutes. However, seeing as his shift at the library didn’t start until eight when it opened, he decided that now would be a good time to get ahead on some homework for his classes. Settling down in the lounge chair in the corner opposite the windows of his dorm room, Scott cracked open his textbooks and got to work, all the while trying to put that awfully strange nightmare out of his mind.

**###**

_Stiles_

“Stiles get up!” Shin said, as he gave Stiles a nudge on his shoulder.

“I’m awake, I’m awake, what happened?” Stiles asked his roommate, Shin Hayashi, as he practically jolted out bed, immediately remembering the programming project the two of them had been working feverishly on the previous night.

“Nothing, except for the giant pool of drool on my shoulder,” Shin responded after a quick laugh at Stiles flailing.

He had to admit he was just a bit embarrassed by the situation at hand, but thankfully, Shin wasn’t one of those straight guys that perceives everything as an advance and was completely comfortable with his bisexuality. That and a bunch of other traits, including some positive physical ones, such as his lean physique and striking dark brown eyes, made him quite the catch in Stiles’ opinion.

“Dude, did we finish the project, I can’t remember,” Stiles said, lazily wiping the sleep from his eyes and dried saliva from his chin with the bottom of his shirt.

“Of course we did bro!” Shin said enthusiastically raising his hand for a high-five. Stiles reciprocated the gesture, which was only slightly delayed due to his drowsiness.

“But I wouldn’t celebrate just yet,” Shin said “’Cause we didn’t compile it before we passed out, so I don’t really know if it works or not.”

“So were there any errors?” Stiles asked as he exchanged the sweatpants and t-shirt he fell asleep in with another pair of sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt.

“Oh, I didn’t compile it yet, that’s why I woke you up. Since its due today and class starts in only a couple of hours, I figured it would be easier and faster if we both worked on it together,” Shin said.

“Good point, let’s get started,” Stiles said, not at all looking forward to the tedious and often infuriating process of debugging hundreds of lines of code. Stiles started Shin’s laptop and opened up the various files associated with their project.

After compiling the code, which on its own took a few minutes, the compiler returned only a few syntax errors that they must have been missed when they were finishing up the project in the early hours of the morning. He and Shin were able to correct the errors in only about a half hour, as most were easily fixable.

Upon compiling the program again after the corrections had been applied, both of them were ecstatic when no errors were detected and it ran successfully.

“Yes!” Shin said doing a celebratory fist pump in the air.

“Thank fuck. Dude that project took forever,” Stiles groaned as he leaned his head against the back of the chair he was sitting in.

“Tell me about it, but hey at least we’re done. Now, you should take a shower,” Shin said, backing away slowly from Stiles in jest.

Stiles only responded with his best offended look.

Shin laughed. “What, I’m just saying; your BO is pretty palpable in here.”

“Palpable. Nice vocab word,” Stiles said, stripping down to his boxers before going into the bathroom.

“I try,” Shin said, still containing his laughter at the whole situation “Be quick about it though, class is in an hour”

“Yes dad,” Stiles said, now giggling a bit to himself.

He sure was lucky to have a roommate with a sense of humor, especially one similar to his, he thought as he entered the shower, he couldn’t imagine how he miserable he would be if he got stuck with someone annoying or ignorant, like Scott’s roommate Andrew.

Stiles finished his shower in only about fifteen minutes and got dressed again. He proceeded to transfer the project from Shin’s laptop to his, which took quite a while as his laptop was old and notoriously slow.

After the transfer completed, he left his dorm room with Shin to get to class early, so they could test the program on the school computers just to make sure it worked; he was not about to be the subject of another failed presentation, once was more than enough.

            **###**

Ugh, could this class be any duller, Stiles thought, slumped over in his seat in Lecture hall AH107 during his American history class. Normally he would be more attentive, but after staying up late to finish that project, he just had no time for Professor Jameson’s bullshit today. But, at least he and Shin had aced their project and the associated presentation, so there was that.

Fortunately for him though, with a class of over a hundred students, it was easy for him to doze off in the back occasionally, confident that his friends, Rosa and Qiana, would wake him if Jameson noticed him.

At least that would be the case if these three dudes in the front would just be quiet.

I thought I was talkative; these guys take the word to a whole new level, he thought, I mean at least I try to make it interesting, these guys are just blathering on about nothing.

Although, from the disinterested and annoyed looks that Rosa and Qiana were directing towards them, he could tell he was not alone in his annoyance with these clowns.

“Well that’s it for today’s lecture, I’ll see you all next class,” Professor Jameson said, seeming practically enthralled by how excited the class was about the day’s lecture. This was, of course, clearly visible on the glazed over faces of the student masses, always eager to absorb his words.

Getting up from his cushioned seat, which due his slouching, had developed a curvature around his ass, Stiles pulled up his slightly sagging sweatpants and exited the hall with Qiana and Rosa. Even though they were all dressed pretty casually for class, he was undoubted the most of casually dressed of the three of them. Rosa was wearing a somewhat loose-fitting, purple long-sleeved shirt with a light, black sweater on top of it and a long maroon skirt. She had her long hair in a bun that day, as she had told him on the way to class that she hadn’t really felt like styling it in any particular fashion that morning.

Qiana, on the other hand, had her hair up in a medium sized afro and was wearing a heavier, blue, turtleneck sweater and tight-fitting black jeans. Come to think of it, he really looked quite raggedy in comparison, but then again he was never one to care much about his appearance.

“I can’t stand that class, especially those three muthafuckas in the front, always makin' ignant ass comments,” Qiana complained.

“I know right, as if Jameson’s monotone ass voice wasn’t annoying enough, we got listen to them argue about whatever amongst themselves,” Rosa said, looking visibly tired of the whole situation.

“Seriously, I just want be like, newsflash, nobody cares about your personal debates, we just want to know material that’s gonna be on the test,” Stiles said.

After a brief pause in their ranting, Rosa, with a distinctive change in tone, said “To be real though, I’d still do the one who sits on the far left. He has quite the physique.”

“You can’t be serious!” Stiles said.

“Stiles, don’t give me that judgment. Not all of us can date Mr. Perfect and get it on the regular. I gotta keep my options open,” Rosa said jokingly.

“But really girl, love yourself,” Qiana said.

Rosa laughed. “Girl, I do, I just need to get that D once in a while.”

“Stiles, don’t lie, you think he’s good looking too,” Rosa said.

“Well, of course, I do, but I’m already spoken for, so it would be inappropriate for a young maid such as myself to comment further on his appearance,” Stiles said. Rosa and Qiana both laughed heartily, the intended effect.

“Says the dude who legit gave us a spreadsheet of all the best looking dudes in his hometown for reference for when we visited during summer break, with rated categories and everything,” Qiana said, just barely managing to contain her laughter.

“Girl, like you didn’t request it,” Rosa said.

“True, but I wasn’t expecting such a thorough evaluation,” Qiana said.

Stiles smiled. “I aim to please.”

By this point in their conversation, the three of them had walked out of Anderson Hall and had almost reached the entrance of the campus cafeteria. Entering the main lunch room, Stiles led the way to a circular table on the right side of the room where Scott, Shin, and Scott’s roommate and fellow lacrosse team member, Andrew, were seated. He was pretty eager to put his stuff down and go get some grub.

“Wus’ up, Scotty,” Stiles said as Scott stood up to greet him with a kiss. Stiles happily returned his boyfriend’s affections, making sure to linger just long enough to cop a feel on that wonderful ass of his.

“Stiles, contain yourself,” Scott whispered.

“What, you have a great ass,” Stiles responded as he took off his backpack and placed it in underneath the seat next to Scott’s before heading out to the buffet table.

As he walked towards the central buffet table set up in the middle of the cafeteria, he noticed that Andrew looked a bit uncomfortable with their openness of affection. Well, tough shit for you, it took me years to work up the courage to admit my feelings for Scott, I’ll be as open as I want, he thought, at least Liam got better over time, this guy was almost as bothersome as Jackson.

Stiles continued to ponder on it as he picked up a burger, fries and a soda. It was, however, just like Scott to offer his friendship to an incoming freshman who apparently didn’t have any friends of his own. One of his many admirable qualities; he just wished he had picked someone a bit more tolerable.

Stiles returned to the table with his lunch just as Rosa was right in the middle of an argument with Andrew, which brought a satisfied smirk to his face.

“I didn’t mean it like that! I was just saying that maybe you shouldn’t talk about your sexual exploits in such detail, people already say things about you,” Andrew said timidly.

“So, I don’t care. Show of hands, does this look like the face of someone who cares about people talking smack about her?” Rosa asked as she pointed towards her face.

“Nope,” everyone at the table except Andrew said.

“See that’s the key, Andrew. I know that you’re a freshman, so no one probably told you yet, but in college, nobody really gives a fuck. Sure they chatter, spread rumors, call me a _puta_ , but its whatever, ain’t nothing gonna come of it,” Rosa said before taking another sip of her iced tea.

“Anyway, Scott, I’m sensing you’re a bit unwell,” Qiana said, clearly feeling some werewolf related vibe that Stiles couldn’t perceive, because he seemed fine to him. But, then again, he always had been one to hide his own pain for the benefit of others.

“I didn’t sleep too well last night and I had this really weird dream, a nightmare really,” Scott said “There were these strange voices, all whispering these same phrases in some language I couldn’t begin to decipher.”

“Sounds pretty trippy,” Shin said in between bites of his turkey and beef sandwich.

“It was,” Scott said, clearly unsettled by the event.

“Hold up. In your dream, were the voices repeating the same phrases over and over, getting louder over time,” Qiana said with an intense look on her face.

“Yeah, actually they did. How did you know that?” Scott said. As if on instinct, Stiles briefly held Scott’s hand under the table, trying to relieve whatever anxiety he was feeling at the moment. The gesture seemed to help, as Scott gave him the subtlest of smiles before responding to Qiana.

“I had a similar dream, but in mine there was only one voice, but it was like really distorted so like, I could hear someone talking, but I couldn’t make out any of the words,” Qiana said, seeming almost doubtful of her own memory.

“Strange. Could just be a coincidence due to stress because I know that you two get really stressed in a similar way about tests and stuff, but I wouldn’t worry about it,” Rosa said, using one of their decided upon code-words to talk about werewolf stuff. Since her mom was the emissary to Qiana’s mom’s pack back in their hometown, she knew quite a bit about werewolves and their connection to one another.

Plus, she was way more straight-forward about it than Deaton ever was, he thought, recalling Deaton’s ever so cryptic non-answers.

“I’ll see you at Lacrosse practice Scott,” Andrew said as he put on his backpack and windbreaker.

“Wait, where are you going? You just got here ten minutes ago,” Shin said.

“Oh, I have to go over to the frat house. We’re having an event today with the sisters from the Epsilon Iota Sigma sorority, and being a legacy and newly accepted member and all, I have to attend,” Andrew said with his usual air of pomposity.

“Oh okay,” Scott said “See you at practice then.”

Once Andrew had exited the cafeteria to go to his frat event, which would surely be intensely riveting, Stiles wasted no time in inquiring further about the strange dreams.

“Really though, Rosa, should we be concerned about this?” Stiles asked.

“I don’t think so, at least not yet anyway. For now, it just seems like you guys just had a similar experience due to your pack link. ‘Cause even though Scott’s not your alpha, Qiana, you are in his pack and he is the nearest alpha around, so you’re probably just in tune with what he’s sensing,” Rosa replied in a hushed tone.

“That certainly makes sense, and it would explain why their dreams weren’t exactly the same, only similar in theme,” Shin said.

“I mean, y’all are making sense and everything but what I felt was just so strong; I can’t believe it didn’t mean anything at all,” Qiana said.

“Yeah I have to agree with her, Scott. Considering all the things that have happened to us over the years that at first seemed like nothing but became very real and dangerous somethings, I think it would be smart for us to not dismiss it right away,” Stiles said.

“Well, seeing as nothing has actually happened yet as the result of these dreams, at least not that I know of, I think that it’s too early to assume that they are related to the supernatural. But as always, it would be good for us to stay alert for the next few days, just in case,” Scott advised them.

Stiles would be lying if he said he didn’t get aroused every time Scott went into alpha mode. If only he would do his alpha roar while he fucked me, I’d probably come harder than I’d ever come before, he thought as the group went back to eating their lunch. Sadly, it wouldn’t ever happen unless we did it deep in the woods, considering it was loud enough to alert everyone in the tri-state area.

The rest of the group’s lunch together was fairly uneventful, ending with Rosa and Scott going to the library to start their shifts for the day, Qiana going back to her dorm to study for her chemistry test, and himself and Shin going to the computer center in Haldermann Hall to begin their shifts, which were thankfully shorter on Wednesday than they were during the rest of the week.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

_Scott_

_“Chrii azathoth azathor yog-sothoth yaror ng tulzscha fm’latgh ebumna vulgtlagln nyarlathotep f’gofn ng nyth culn shugg cstell’bsna kadishtu r’luh kadishtu nacch-tith wagh’n phlegeth cgotha ee kadishtu kn’aa,”_ the same voices from the night before whispered in his mind. The only difference being that this time the chant seemed to be complete, whereas previously it had been fragmented.

Unfortunately for him though, it seemed as if the intensity had increased from the night before, waking him from his slumber after only a few repetitions. He got out of his bed sweating and feeling as if he was in a haze of sorts, having trouble calming down from his nightmare. Gladly, he was broken out of this state when he heard his phone vibrating on the nightstand.

Scott quickly picked it up and saw it was Qiana calling him.

“I’m guessing you had that nightmare again?” Scott asked.

“Yep, same one, but I felt worse waking up from it than I did yesterday,” Qiana said.

“Yeah I did too; it was almost like I couldn’t control myself, like I couldn’t focus. It was really weird,” Scott said.

“I think I have an explanation for that. When I woke up, I felt terrible so I went to the bathroom, turned on the lights, looked in the mirror and lo and behold my eyes were glowing and my claws were like half out,” Qiana said.

“Yeah, that’s probably the same thing that happened to me. I almost have trouble believing it though. I mean, I’ve been in control of my shift for years now, even during full moons, and nothing else seems to affect me that way,” Scott said, thankful that Andrew had decided to stay over at the fraternity house that night.

Why is this happening, he thought, reflecting upon how nice and frankly peaceful the past few years had been. He didn’t want to go back to dealing with supernatural issues, but he had to face the facts whether he wanted to or not.

“So what do you think this means, ‘cause honestly I don’t have a fucking clue,” Qiana said.

“I really don’t know, but I think we should have a meeting with the others tomorrow morning about it. For now, I think its best that we both just try to get some sleep,” Scott said.

“Yeah, I’m pretty exhausted myself, what with these crazy dreams and shit. Well, see you in the morning,” Qiana said as she ended the call.

Scott sat on edge of his bed for a while afterwards trying to mentally prepare himself for whatever was to come. You can do this. Whatever it is, you and your pack can handle it, he thought while taking some calming, deep breaths.

With that, he laid back down on his bed and tried to relax enough to fall back asleep.

**###**

_Stiles_

He walked hurriedly with Shin over to the campus coffee shop near the administration building, anxious of what was so important that both Scott and Qiana had sent him urgent texts to meet them there.

They arrived at the café within about ten minutes of leaving their dorm room on the third floor of the Milton Dormitory building. Thankfully, it wasn’t crowded that morning so they wouldn’t have to worry too much about someone overhearing their conversation. The two of them walked over and sat down at the booth where Scott, Qiana, and Rosa were already seated.

“Stiles! Scoot over a little bit,” Qiana said as she pushed him down the booth seat.

“Did you even take a shower this morning?” Rosa asked.

“No! In your texts you guys said it was urgent. I put some deodorant on,” Stiles said.

“Clearly not enough,” Rosa said. Stiles took a second to smell his pits in the midst of such accusations. They were right, he did smell pretty rank.

“Anyway, what did you guys want to talk about?” Stiles said, doing his best to change the subject.

“Me and Qiana had the same dream again last night, but even stronger than before,” Scott said.

“What do you mean by stronger?” Shin asked. He was just as perplexed as Shin was about this whole thing. After all, it was difficult for ordinary humans to understand the complex sensations that could arise from the werewolves’ hypersensitivity to the world around them.

“Like it was intense. It made us partially shift afterwards, as if we didn’t have any control over ourselves,” Qiana said, looking more than a bit worried.

“Wait what? Scott, why didn’t you text me, like immediately?” Stiles asked even though he already knew the answer. Scott always was so considerate of others, even when it really wasn’t necessary; he should know by now that he had no problem waking up the middle of the night to investigate supernatural weirdness.

“Well, we didn’t want to wake you guys, especially since we still have no idea what this is all about,” Scott said.

“See, that’s exactly why you should have woken us up. Regardless, what in particular was different about the dream this time?” Stiles asked.

“Well, for one thing, the chant spoken by all the voices seemed complete this time whereas Monday night it felt fragmented, like as if there as more to it,” Scott said.

“And your dream, Qiana?” Stiles asked.

“Mine was basically the same, except it was one voice in mine. It sounded a lot like an old man, but I’m not really sure if he was saying the same stuff that the voices in his dream were,” Qiana answered.

“So, what language do you think those voices were chanting in?” Shin asked.

“As I said yesterday, I couldn’t begin to guess. All I know is that it has this strange guttural sound to it, not like anything I’ve ever heard before,” Scott said. He could practically sense the waves of worry coming of Scott throughout the entire conversation. Stiles had to admit, Scott was sure great at hiding such feelings, but he had known him long enough that he didn’t need super senses to detect them.

“Yeah I don’t have any idea about that either to be honest,” Qiana said.

“Okay, well seeing as we still don’t have any concrete answers about any of this, I think it would be best if you guys wake us up tonight when you have the dream again, ‘cause I have strong feeling you will,” Stiles suggested.

“Yeah that sounds good, but what do we do afterwards?” Shin asked.

“Well, I kinda thought we’d just figure it out from there,” Stiles said, realizing that while he was pretty good at coming up with the initial idea for a plan, he wasn’t all that great at working out the finer details.

“Now that that’s settled, Qiana, you ready to go Professor Avery’s office to ask about those homework problems?” Rosa asked.

“Yep, let’s go. I wanna make sure I got all the right answers to study from for the quiz next week,” Qiana responded.

“Stiles, I’m heading back to the dorm to study for Data structures. You down?” Shin asked as he was about to leave.

“Of course, I’ll be there in a bit,” Stiles said, signaling to Shin that he needed some alone time with Scott first.

After the others had left the Café and it was just the two of them sitting next to one another on one of the booth benches, Stiles thought it would be an appropriate time to confirm that their plans hadn’t changed for that evening.

“So, with all this weirdness happening lately, do you wanna cancel date night?” Stiles asked leaning his head on Scott’s shoulder.

“Of course not, I love our date nights. I mean we only do it once a month, and we missed it last month because we both had papers due the next day, so I’m not about to miss this one too,” Scott said as he nuzzled against Stiles.

“Such a sweetheart,” Stiles teased.

“Hey, don’t act like date night wasn’t your idea to begin with Mr. Oh-I’m-not-that-romantic,” Scott responded.

“Shut up,” Stiles said, pulling Scott towards him for quick yet gentle kiss.

Just when they were on the verge of a full on make out session, Stiles pulled away, which made Scott whine with want. He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t enjoy teasing Scott just a little bit.

“As much as I’d like to continue, I really should get back to my room to cover that material with Shin. The test isn’t till Monday but I wanna be prepared, especially ‘cause of that C I got on the first one,” Stiles said.

“I understand. See ya later babe,” Scott said as Stiles got up from the booth.

“Definitely,” Stiles said, giving Scott a quick peck on the lips before heading back to his dorm room.

**###**

It had only been a few hours since him and Shin had begun to go over the material for the next exam, but he was already feeling more confident about it. They had already gone over the simpler data structures and were now moving on to the more complex ones available in Java and C++, which were the two main programming languages they were working with that semester.

As he returned to his chair after getting a sandwich out of the mini-fridge, Stiles remembered to tell Shin that he needed the room to himself for a few hours that night.

“So, I’m going to need the room for a few hours tonight,” Stiles said.

“Date night with Scott?” Shin asked.

“Yep, we should be back from the restaurant at about nine,” Stiles said.

“And that means you’ll be done with your after date sexy time by like ten right?” Shin asked.

“Yeah probably,” Stiles responded.

“Well, fortunately for you, I already planned in advance. I took the evening shift at the center, so I shouldn’t be back till eleven,” Shin said.

“Dude, you’re the best,” Stiles said, thankful that his roommate never really started any drama over this sort of thing.

“Yeah, I know,” Shin said nonchalantly.

“Although you’re free to stay and watch,” Stiles joked.

“Thanks, but I’m going to have to decline. That’s really not something I need to be seeing or hearing. I’m still trying to recover from that time I walked in on you guys during our first semester,” Shin said.

“It was hot, don’t lie,” Stiles said.

“While I won’t deny that you and Scott are good looking dudes, I do not need that imagery. Plus, I already see your dick enough as it is,” Shin said as he went over to get a soda form the mini-fridge.

“But don’t think I did it entirely for your benefit. Mia’s also working at the center tonight, and that’s when I plan to make my move,” Shin said proudly.

Stiles smiled. “Just make sure not to trip over the wires this time. That really didn’t endear you to Cindy last year.”

Shin laughed. “Well, I was still a freshman then, lacking in confidence and suavity, only but a young padawan, unskilled in the art of romance. This time will be different.”

“Well, I’m rooting ya, buddy,” Stiles said.

“Seriously though, how come you guys don’t just go over to his dorm after your date?” Shin asked.

“Like Andrew would ever allow that. The guy’s way too uptight and he clearly doesn’t like me all that much, so I doubt he’d be willing to do me a favor,” Stiles said “But, I can assure you, the feeling’s mutual.”

“I know right, that guy has such a stick up his ass. Why do we hang out with him again?” Shin said.

“Oh you know, because Scott thought that since he’s a freshman and didn’t seem to have any friends a few weeks into the semester, that it would be nice do bring him into our group,” Stiles said. “I mean it’s not like it wasn’t a nice thing to do, but Andrew’s just so full of himself.”

“Seriously, always talking about that frat. I never understood why anyone wants to join one of those things,” Shin said.

“Yeah me neither,” Stiles said.

“Well, we really should get back to studying,” Shin said.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Stiles said, knowing that it was best that he restrain himself, because if he didn’t, he would just go off on a bunch of tangents and never get any work done.

“So where did we stop?” Stiles asked.

“We were working on problem ten in chapter five,” Shin answered.

It’s best if I just focus on studying for now. No sense getting all worried about whatever supernatural threat we may have to face next, he told himself, trying to place such worries in the back of his mind until he would have to face them later that night.

**###**

_Scott_

While he waited for Stiles outside of the pizza place, which was their idea of a fancy restaurant, Scott took a moment to take in his surroundings. The autumn air here in Massachusetts was much cooler than it was in California this time of year and he was still in awe of the changing color of all the foliage around him, even though it was only just beginning. Sure, occasionally he did miss the warmth and almost endless summer that seemed to exist in northern California where he had grown up; he had to admit that this place certainly had its charms. Well, except the snow, that he wasn’t very fond of.

A few minutes after he had finished that thought, Scott saw his boyfriend walking down the sidewalk towards him. Stiles had put on one of his nicer long sleeved shirts for the occasion along with some worn in jeans, as he knew Stiles never liked to get fully dressed up for these sorts of things; it always just made him feel more nervous. Why he felt nervous at all was still a mystery to Scott as they had known each other since preschool and had been practically inseparable since.

He probably just feels like he needs prove himself or something like that, since it took him so long to ask me out in the first place, he thought as Stiles approached him.

Stiles greeted him with a long, warm embrace of a hug, which told him everything he needed to know about how Stiles felt about their current relationship.

“Ready to go in?” Stiles asked.

“Definitely,” Scott said.

The two of them entered the pizzeria, made their order at the front counter and took a seat at a two-person table located near one the windows. Sitting down, Scott took a brief moment to appreciate how nice the sunset looked that evening.

“So ominous, trippy dreams aside, how are you feeling?” Stiles asked as he intertwined their hands on the table.

“Pretty good actually. All my classes were fine and my lab experiment went smoothly, so I didn’t get any points off for messing up the procedures,” Scott said.

“Ugh don’t remind me of labs. I’m so glad I passed my only required lab science last semester. Those experiments were always such a pain in the ass and I could never get the right results,” Stiles said.

“Way to be positive Stiles,” Scott said.

“Sorry, I-I didn’t mean to…,” Stiles said, seeming almost timid for a second.

“Stiles, I was just kidding. Really, there’s no need to be nervous or feel like you can’t be yourself. And even though I said it before, I’ll say it again. Just because we’re together now doesn’t mean I expect anything different of you or that I want you to impress me or whatever. I just want you,” Scott said.

“Thanks, Scotty. I know you’re right. I just want us to be good, you know,” Stiles said.

“We are good Stiles, and we always will be,” Scott said.

On that note the pizza arrived at their table, which brought an unexpected conclusion to their heartfelt conversation. They shared a laugh at the rather awkward timing of it all.

“Look at us, getting all emotional at a pizzeria like some newly married couple,” Stiles said.

“Yeah, but would want that Stiles, for us to, you know, get married?” Scott asked.

If he was being perfectly honest with himself, he’d had been hopelessly in love with his best friend since they first met, before he even truly knew what love was. But, Stiles needed more time to come to terms with his feelings for Scott and for them as a couple, so Scott didn’t expect an answer now or even soon. He just knew that that what was he wanted and he was willing to wait for however long Stiles needed him to.

“Of course I do!” Stiles said with his mouth half full of pizza “I mean not now of course, I’d like to get done with college, get a job, and do all that other adult stuff before then, but yeah, totally.”

Scott smiled what surely must of have been one of his brightest smiles at Stiles’ response, as it was exactly what he had been hoping for.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook for a real proposal though. I want a big ass ring, with like a huge diamond that’s been encrusted with other diamonds. Oh and dipped in gold afterwards,” Stiles said.

Scott laughed. “Yeah, sure Stiles, I’ll get right on that.”

“On to a different topic, why are you being so hesitant about confronting what’s really behind these strange dreams you and Qiana have been having?” Stiles inquired.

“Two reasons really. One, while Qiana, Rosa, and Shin, are all very familiar with supernatural stuff given that they all basically grew up around it, their hometown, Meadow Brook, didn’t have any of the issues that ours did. They haven’t faced any large supernatural conflicts, so I just want to be sure that something supernatural is going down around campus before we expose them to that kind of stress and anxiety,” Scott responded.

“Good point,” Stiles said.

“And two, I’m still just hoping it’s nothing because as much as I believe that it’s our duty to defend the campus and surrounding areas against any supernatural threats, I’d really rather us continue our lives here as just normal college students, dealing with exams, papers, and parties, you know non-life threatening problems and events,” Scott said.

“Believe me Scott, I totally understand. It has been pretty nice these last couple of years, but I agree, if something is really up, then we have to deal with it. But, I guess we won’t know that until later tonight,” Stiles said.

Yeah, and if we do, well then the nightmare truly begins anew, Scott thought as he tried to focus on enjoying the rest of the evening with his best friend and boyfriend without dwelling too much on his own worries and fears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed the fic and want to send me feedback or just want to talk, you can reach me on [ twitter ](http://twitter.com/Estraeven) or on [ tumblr ](http://estraeven.tumblr.com).


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

_Stiles_

“Stiles get up!” Scott said as he gently shook him awake from his sleep. Before Scott even said anything else, he already knew that he had had the same dream again.

“Did you have that nightmare again?” Stiles asked, groggy and surprised as he noticed that Scott’s eyes were glowing.

“Yeah I did, but I never fell asleep,” Scott said with just a tinge of fear in his voice.

“Oh shit,” Stiles said.

“Oh shit is right. That means whatever voices me and Qiana have been hearing actually exist and must be coming from somewhere fairly close, probably on campus,” Scott said as the two of them got out Scott’s bed. They were both naked from earlier that evening, when they had engaged in quite the tantalizing sexual endeavor, evidenced by the dried cum still on their stomachs and thighs a few hours after the fact.

We really should have taken a shower afterwards, he thought, knowing full well that both of them were so exhausted after their sex marathon to really do much of anything afterwards.

They both dressed themselves in a pair of boxers, sweatpants, a t-shirt, and a university hoodie as it would surely be chilly outside at this hour. Briefly checking his phone, he saw that it was about it was about eleven o’clock, so Shin was probably close to finishing his shift at the computer center.

“Scott where should I tell the others to meet us? Where do you want to start looking?” Stiles asked.

“Uh I guess we’ll start in the quad at the center of the university campus and go from there,” Scott said, seeming a bit unsure of his decision; after that confirmation, Stiles texted Shin, Rosa, and Qiana to meet them in the center of the quad.

“Alright, you ready to go?” Scott asked.

“Yep. Let’s go,” Stiles replied as they walked briskly out of Stiles’ dorm room, down several flights of stairs, and out the entrance to the Milton Dormitory.

**###**

They had made it to the quad in just a few minutes, but it took about ten minutes for the others to show up. Rosa and Qiana showed up in much similar attire to theirs while Shin had just slipped on a hoodie over his work clothes.

“So how are we going to locate the source of these voices?” Qiana said.

“Since you heard a single voice while I heard many, it’s possible they could be in two different locations or the same one. So, I think our best bet at locating them tonight is to just assume they are in the same place. They may not be, but we don’t know for how much longer they’ll chant for tonight and I don’t want us to miss our chance,” Scott said.

“Sounds like a good plan. Lead the way,” Rosa said.

Scott and Qiana shifted just enough so that their eyes were glowing and their ears had extended into their werewolf counterparts to allow them to pick up the voices to their maximum capability. After the two of them drew their hoodies over the faces as much as possible to hide their appearance from any onlookers, the five of them headed off in search of the source of the mysterious voices.

**###**

After what had been about a half an hour of searching, exhausting searching at that, they finally came to the back entrance of Haldermann Hall.

“They must be in here!” Scott and Qiana both said, almost growling at the satisfaction of being closer to finding out what had been so distressing their wolves.

“It’s locked,” Rosa said, noting the electronic key-card reader that was standard for most buildings on campus.

“I’ll just use my key-card,” Stiles said as fumbled through his pockets looking for his work ID “Actually, no I won’t. I forgot to bring it with me.”

“It’s okay dude, I got mine,” Shin said. Almost fucked it up there Stiles, great job, he thought as he wheezed a bit, trying to recover from all the running they had just done.

Shin entered his passcode into the key-card reader causing it to unlock a few seconds later. Scott and Qiana immediately took off through the doorway, running down the closest stairway to get to the basement floor below. He, Shin, and Rosa followed posthaste.

By the time the three of them had caught up with Scott and Qiana, the two of them had already gotten to the end of the basement hallway and entered classroom HHB6. He was surprised when he entered the room to see Scott and Qiana holding their ears to floor.

“They’re not here?” Stiles said incredulously. Well, this just became that much more perplexing, he thought.

“Nah, they’re lower, somewhere below this basement and to the right,” Qiana said as she and Scott stood up from the floor.

“She’s right; all the voices are coming from somewhere not close but too far away either. They must be somewhere on this campus. They must be in some building that has multiple basement levels or something,” Scott said.

“Hmm, I don’t know of any building like that on campus, but, Scott, I think it would be best if we check the archives of the library at work tomorrow. They may have some information on the school’s building plans or something we could use,” Rosa suggested.

“Yeah, sounds like a good plan, I mean, unless anyone else has any clue about which building they might be in,” Scott said.

“Honestly I have no idea,” Shin said.

“Yep, me neither Scott, but I think her plan is the right way to go. We can’t investigate this further if we don’t know where they are,” Stiles said.

“Alright, well I guess that’s it for now, probably best that we get outta here before some security guard finds us and wants to know what we’re doing here,” Qiana said.

“Good point, let’s get going,” Stiles said as they exited classroom HHB6 and headed out of the building.

**###**

After the Rosa and Qiana had already returned to their dorm in Crenshaw dormitory and after Shin had already gone back inside, Stiles stood outside his dorm for to talk with Scott.

“Stiles, are you okay?” Scott asked.

Stiles laughed weakly. “Oh yeah I’m fine, just a bit sore from all that running, it was a bit of a workout.”

“No, Stiles, I mean how are handling this, you’re shaking,” Scott said. Not well at all I can assure you, he thought.

“Well, Scott, if you hadn’t noticed it is quite chilly out here,” Stiles said.

Scott gave him a serious look in response. “Okay, seriously, I’m fine it’s just that with how calm things have been the past few years, I guess I lulled myself into a false sense of security. I kinda forgot that there really isn’t any safety when it comes to supernatural stuff, you know?”

“Yeah I do,” Scott said.

“Still, we’ll make it through this. We always do,” Stiles said as he brought Scott in close for a kiss.

“I hope so,” Scott said, briefly touching his forehead to Stiles’ before heading back to his dorm room in Franklin dormitory.

“Me too,” Stiles said as he watched Scott walk away for a while before going back into his dorm room to at least attempt to get a few hours of sleep before the next day’s classes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed the fic and want to send me feedback or just want to talk, you can reach me on [ twitter ](http://twitter.com/Estraeven) or on [ tumblr ](http://estraeven.tumblr.com).


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

_Scott_

Man, these books are so musty and moldy, he thought as he placed some old books back onto their appropriate shelves on the fourth floor of the library that morning. Returning books to their proper place was certainly the part of his job that he liked the least, but overall he felt the job suited him. He definitely preferred manning the help desk, as he enjoyed assisting people in finding what they were looking for.

When Scott had returned the final books on the cart onto their respective shelves, he received a text from Rosa, who was working at one of the help desks.

_I found the building plans for the university. There’s a bunch of them, going back to the 19th century. We should be able to find something useful in them._

Glad that they did not encounter a dead end in their investigation, he texted her back:

_That’s great, good job. I’ll meet up with you in a few after I return the cart to the storage room._

He returned the book cart he was using to room 204 on the second floor before taking the stairs down to the first floor to meet up with Rosa.

“How are we going to get into the archives, only the head librarian has the code for the door,” Scott said as he approached Rosa’s help desk.

“Don’t worry about it. I already got it this morning, I watched her enter the code and copied it down,” Rosa said showing him the piece of paper that she quickly jotted it down on.

“Should we go in now, I don’t want us to get caught ‘cause they’ll know we’re not supposed to be down there,” Scott said. He knew he was just being paranoid, but he liked his job and it paid pretty well, so he really wasn’t trying to lose it.

“Ms. Flores just left for lunch so she won’t be back for an hour. She always takes her lunch break from eleven to twelve every day on the dot. All we have to do is make sure we’re outta there before she comes back,” Rosa said, lowering her voice a little bit when a fellow library worker passed by the desk.

“Okay then, let’s go,” Scott said.

“Wait, hold up,” Rosa said “Hey, Brittany, would you mind covering the help desk for me for like the next hour. Ms. Flores told me and Scott to do some organizing on the third floor; she said you should work the help desk while I’m up there.”

“Oh okay, thanks for telling me,” Brittany said.

“Now we can go,” Rosa whispered to him.

He and Rosa went down the stairs at the other side of the first floor to the basement entrance to the archives, trying to be as inconspicuous of possible. Once there, Rosa swiped her work key-card and entered in the six digit code to unlock the door. Entering the archives, Scott was admittedly impressed with the size of the basement room; he had originally thought it was just a small storage room for a few older books and other historic items, but clearly he was mistaken.

“The plans are over here,” Rosa said as she led the way to where larger historical documents were kept.

They came to a group of shelves that had many smaller compartments where blueprints and plans were rolled up like scrolls.

“From what I looked up in the database, the building plans should be in compartments E6 to E11,” Rosa said. Scott quickly but gently grabbed all the plans as he didn’t want to damage them. He put them all down on one of the large examination tables at the back of the archives, anxious to find out some answers.

“Which ones should we start with?” Rosa asked.

“I have a feeling that since the room we heard the chants from is definitely underground, I would expect that it would be earlier in construction than some of the new buildings, or it might be part of an older building that was incorporated into a newer one. So, I think we should look at the oldest plans first then the newer ones,” Scott answered.

“Okay well the two oldest ones are these two,” Rosa said holding up two of the plans “This one’s dated 1907 and this one’s from 1883.”

She handed him the oldest one to look over while she examined the second oldest one.

**###**

It had been about a twenty minutes since they started looking over the plans and he was beginning to get frustrated. The writing on the plans was practically indecipherable without a magnifying glass and a degree in cryptography; it had been relatively easy to figure out which sheet of the plans was referring to which level, but the building and room labels were so faded and apparently hastily written that he could barely read any of them.

However, as if a reward for his persistence, Scott was finally been able to locate what he believed to be the entrance to an area near where he suspected the chants were coming from the night before.

“Rosa, I think I found something!” Scott said as he called her over to his end of the examination table “This plan shows that there are several entrances to this large area of connected underground passage ways underneath the campus.”

“Are any of the entrances close to Haldermann Hall?” Rosa asked.

“This one right here,” Scott said, pointing to an entrance that wasn’t exactly right next to Haldermann but instead was a little ways down the street in a spot that was occupied by what looked to be a house. “It says here that the house on top of the entrance was once the women’s dormitory building.

“I know the house you’re talking about. Ironically enough, it’s now the house of the fraternity Epsilon Tau Lambda,” Rosa said.

“Did you find that in the other plan?” Scott asked.

“Actually, I walk by that frat house almost every day to class,” Rosa said “Anyway, at least now we know that whatever is going on, that fraternity is involved.”

“Yeah sure looks like it. I hope Andrew’s okay and not involved in whatever is happening in that fraternity,” Scott said.

“Andrew? What does he have to do with this?” Rosa asked, annoyed at the mere mention of his name. Honestly, he couldn’t really blame her; Andrew really hadn’t done his best to endear himself to his boyfriend or his friends.

“Epsilon Tau Lambda is his fraternity, but he just pledged and got accepted a few weeks ago, I highly doubt he’s involved in what's going on in those underground passageways,” Scott said.

“Oh no wonder I didn’t know, I usually just stop paying attention whenever he starts taking about his frat stuff,” Rosa said.

“Anyway, since these plans are too big for the photocopier down here, we should take some pictures of the important parts so we can show them to the others later” Scott said.

“Yeah you’re right,” Rosa said as she got out her phone. They proceeded to take pictures of the relevant sections of all the plans, making sure to focus on the frat house and the surrounding area.

By the time they were done with that, it was about ten minutes till twelve, so Scott grabbed all the plans and ran over to their storage area. He put each plan back in its slot carefully to make it look as if no one had moved them recently. He returned to the examination table to find that Rosa had finished cleaning it of any dust or debris that had come along with the plans they looked at.

After the table looked spotless, the two of them walked out the door to the archives and back up to the first floor, with only a few minutes to spare before Ms. Flores returned.

“I’ll text Stiles, Shin, and Qiana to meet up with us this evening after their classes so we can figure out what to do next,” Rosa said.

“I’ll see ya then,” Scott said as they parted ways, with Rosa going back to the help desk and him grabbing another cart full of books to be returned to their proper spots on the shelves on the floors above him.

**###**

_Stiles_

“I need Microsoft Office for my laptop, do you have any copies still available,” a student asked Shin who sat at the computer assistants station adjacent to Stiles’ station. Oh, here we go, he thought.

“Sure, we still got a bunch left. What version of Windows are you running on your laptop?” Shin asked.

“What do you mean by version?” the student asked clearly unaware of what that meant.

“Like what operating system are you using. We have versions of office that are compatible with Windows 8, 7, and Vista,” Shin said, always the paragon of patience.

“I don’t know man, I don’t know much about computers, I just know it’s a Windows PC,” the student said as if in some sort of dream haze.

Oh for fuck sake, Stiles thought. “Dude, there should be a sticker or an imprint on the bottom right inside corner of the laptop that states what version of Windows the computer came equipped with from the factory,”

The student found the area on the laptop that he had described but only after several minutes of looking at the computer like it was some alien device from another planet.

“Oh, here it is. I guess it has Windows 7, thanks man,” the student said.

“No problem,” Stiles said barely containing his irritation. Maybe, just maybe, next time you could not come here high as fuck, so we could expedite this process a bit.

“Well, here’s your copy, I’ll just need to see your student ID first before I can give it you,” Shin said.

“Oh okay, man. Here you go,” the student said, handing Shin his ID card.

“Thanks, Kyle, here you go,” Shin said as he gave the student back his ID card and his copy of Microsoft Office.

“Thanks man,” Kyle said as lazily strode out of the computer center.

Once he was gone, Stiles blurted out “Ohhh my god, the kind of ignorant people we get in here on a daily basis. I swear I’m gonna lose my mind”

“Seems like you already have,” Shin said.

Stiles put on his best offended expression at that comment.

“Stiles, you know I’m just playing,” Shin said leaning back in his chair “Believe me; I totally understand your frustration. But, it’s the only IT related job on campus, so we don’t really have much of an option.”

“True, gotta build that resume,” Stiles said.

“Yup,” Shin said. They both shared a brief laugh at the recent happenings, as it was the only way they knew how to stay sane in this glorified customer service position they were in. Not that it was a terrible job or anything, he just didn’t have the same patience in dealing with people he didn’t like that Scott did. Yet another one of his admirable qualities that I wish I had, Stiles thought as the two of them went back to queuing up print requests and other miscellaneous tasks.

**###**

About an hour later, two frat guys came into the computer center and sat down in the middle of the row of computers close to where he and Shin were seated at the assistance stations. Upon sitting down, they appeared to be continuing a conversation already in progress. Usually Stiles just ignored all the background talking and whatnot that was common in the center, but what these two were talking about sounded quite interesting.

“Dude, that hazing was so crazy last night. I didn’t think any of those pledges would pass the test,” frat guy number one said.

“Well, serves them right for pledging late. They deserved that extra trial,” frat guy number two said.

“Totally, man, I agree. But, man, it always smells terrible in those rooms under the basement of the house,” frat guy number one said

“Bruh, I know, but like that makes it perfect for testing these new pledges doesn’t it,” frat guy number two said.

“Oh yeah bro, I never thought of like that, you’re right,” frat guy number one said.

Hmm. Interesting. There must be pretty wild hazing going on at that frat. I wonder, could it have anything to with those voices? Stiles thought as another frat guy came into the computer center and came strolling toward them. Luckily, this one had a t-shirt on that identified which frat he belonged to. Stiles quickly scribbled down the Greek letters on his shirt: ETΛ. Epsilon Tau Lambda, I know I’ve heard that before. I just can’t remember when, he pondered as the third frat guy took a seat next to his two frat brothers.

“Why are you guys talking about what happened last night?” frat guy number three said. He seemed to be some sort of high ranking member of their frat because that sure shut the two of them up real quick.

“We weren’t talking to any non-members about it,” frat guy number one said.

“True, you weren’t. But, you two were talking loud enough for at least half this room to hear you. That counts too,” frat guy number three whispered harshly at them.

“Shit, you’re right. Man we didn’t even realize that. Sorry, we won’t do it again,” frat guy number one said.

“Yeah, we’ll be more careful from now on,” frat guy number two said.

Afterwards the three of them became quiet as they all started working on whatever assignments they had come to the computer center to work on in the first place.

“Shin,” Stiles said in a low voice as he tapped him on the shoulder.

“What is it?” Shin asked.

“I think I may have found some information about where the voices might be coming from?” Stiles whispered.

“Wait, how?” Stiles asked.

“Those frat guys over there; I just overheard them talking about a hazing ritual that happened last night in some sort of underground area underneath their frat house,” Stiles said.

“Shit, that could be something,” Shin said as he took his phone out of his pocket after it began to vibrate “Well, it looks like we’re not the only ones who found a possible lead today. Rosa just texted me that she and Scott also found something in the building plans they looked at in the archives. She also said that we should all meet up later in the cafeteria to figure out what to do next.”

“She probably sent me the text as well,” Stiles said as he grabbed his phone out of his jacket, which he had put over the back of his computer chair when he got into work that morning. “Yep, she did.”

“Okay, so I’ll text her about what we found out and tell her that we’ll meet her, Scott, and Qiana later today after we finish our classes,” Shin said.

“Sounds good. Speaking of classes, I gotta get to mine that starts in like 2 minutes” Stiles said after he quickly glanced at his watch.

“See ya later then,” Shin as Stiles logged off of his work station computer, put on his jacket, and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

“See ya,” Stiles said as he walked out of the computer center and up the nearest staircase to his class.

**###**

_Scott_

He arrived at the cafeteria at about five o’clock after just finishing up with a four-hour lab period for his microbiology class. Honestly, he was pretty exhausted and just wanted to go back to his room to sleep, but he had to continue delving into this growing mystery despite his reservations.

Entering the cafeteria, Scott noticed that it was quite empty, which was to be expected considering that not many students came in for dinner until around seven or eight o’clock. He walked over to where his friends were already seated, at a table at the very far end of the cafeteria, presumably to make their conversations as secretive as possible.

After he sat down at the table, Scott said “Rosa, have you already told them about what we found it the plans?”

“Nah, I was waiting for you to get here, my phone fucked up or something, so the pics I took came out mad blurry,” Rosa said frustratedly.

“It’s okay, we’ll just use mine, I looked over them before my lab and they’re pretty clear,” Scott said.

“Aight, so what the fuck did y’all figure out, because I’m a bit out of the loop right now,” Qiana said, which was understandable considering she had been stuck in back to back classes the entire day.

“Scott, I think you and Rosa should go first,” Stiles said.

“Yeah, he’s right, it seems like you guys found out more than we did,” Shin said.

“Okay, well, as Rosa detailed in her text, we were able to find some of the old building plans and blueprints for the university in the library archives this morning,” Scott said.

“In the oldest plan, we found that a network of passageways was built under the university, possibly even before its construction as they were already there when first buildings of the university were built back in 1883,” Rosa said.

“We found that one of the entrances to the passages is in the basement of a four story house that was built close to Haldermann Hall. It was originally used as the college’s women’s dormitory,” Scott said as he pulled up the relevant photos of the plans on his phone for the others to look at.

“And it turns out that same building is now being used as the Miskatonic chapter house of the Epsilon Tau Lambda fraternity,” Rosa said.

“So, you guys think that that fraternity might be involved with the chanting we heard coming from that general direction underground last night?” Qiana asked.

“We’re not a hundred percent sure, but it definitely seems plausible and it’s really all we have to go on right now,” Scott said.

“Actually, Scott, I think we can be a hundred percent sure,” Stiles said “Because I overheard a couple of frat guys from Epsilon Tau Lambda this morning at work talking about a hazing ritual that apparently took place in some room in those passages last night.”

“That’s sounds like some pretty good evidence to me,” Qiana said.

“Wait, really. Stiles, did they say anything else, like what language the chants were in?” Scott said, a bit desperate for more information, because knowing that something was going down was useful and all, but they still needed to know exactly what was going on down there.

“Nope, they just briefly talked about hazing with no specifics mentioned,” Stiles answered.

“Well unless that hazing involved acid or shrooms or some shit, I highly doubt that’s all that was going on, because from what you guys were saying about the chanting, it doesn’t seem likely that it was produced by some drunken frat boys hazing some eager pledges,” Shin said, “However, I still think that something is going on down there, and considering there is an entrance to these passages directly beneath the frat house, we should definitely check it out.”

“I agree. So, how are we gonna go about this?” Scott asked the group.

“Well since Andrew is the only person we know who is in the fraternity, I think we should use him as our way in” Stiles said.

“But it’s not like these parties are invitation only, couldn’t we just show up?” Rosa asked.

“You’re right, they’re not, but what he’s saying is that if all five of us showed up at the party and started looking around, it might seem a bit suspicious since we aren’t exactly heavy frequenters of their parties, or any fraternity’s or sorority’s parties for that matter,” Qiana said.

“Exactly. That way if anyone wonders what we’re doing there, we can just say that Andrew invited us,” Stiles said.

“Sounds like a good plan, but with one problem: how are we going to get Andrew to invite us?” Shin said

“Well, that’s where Scott comes in, he’ll ask Andrew tomorrow after the economics class they have together if all of us can come to the frat’s party tomorrow night,” Stiles said.

Stiles was right that Andrew wouldn’t deny him as they had become friends over the past couple of weeks despite Andrew’s noticeable shortcomings. However, that still didn’t change the fact that he was uncomfortable with using people to achieve his own goals.

“Scott, if you really don’t want to, we can think of something else?” Stiles asked, clearly noticing the short pause that he had taken from the conversation. Since they were kids, Stiles had always been great at reading his emotions even if he wasn’t very obvious about them, so it wasn’t a surprise to him that he would pick up on his uncertainty about their plan.

“No, its fine Stiles, I’ll ask him tomorrow, but how do you know that there’s going to be a big party tomorrow night?” Scott asked.

“Scott, its Friday night at a Frat. If there isn’t a party planned for tomorrow then I’m Puff, the magic dragon,” Stiles answered.

Everyone had a good laugh at his comment, which Scott definitely thought was needed at the moment, as he could tell the group was pretty tense about executing this plan of theirs.

“So once we’re at the party, what do we do?” Qiana asked.

“Me and Shin will attempt to follow some of the frat guys into the area we heard them talking about,” Stiles said.

“No, that’s too dangerous for you guys, why don’t Qiana and I go down there instead. We’re much capable of defending ourselves than you two are,” Scott said.

“Actually, Scott, in this case it would be best for you and Qiana to stay upstairs at the party with me, as it’s clear to me that whatever supernatural power that chanting or whoever is doing the chanting has, it seems to have quite the negative effect on you guys,” Rosa said.

“She’s right, Scott, when we were trying to locate the source of the chanting last night, the more I focused on it, the less in control of myself I felt. If we go down there, we might lose control all together,” Qiana said.

“True, but I still think it’s too dangerous for them. What if they become affected by the chanting when they go down there? Maybe it only affects regular humans when they get closer, but because of our enhanced senses, Qiana and I reacted as if we closer than we were,” Scott said.

“Even if it does have an effect on everyone, not just supernaturals, I have a solution. I’ll make you both protection amulets that should keep you safe from all magic and supernatural effects while you’re down there,” Rosa said. He was glad they had Rosa, a trained druid, on their side; she was knowledgeable about many supernatural matters and was far more open about her knowledge than any druid he had met previously.

“How long will they take to prepare? Do you have all the necessary ingredients?” Scott asked.

“Not long at all. They only consist of some rowan tree bark put in little bag with the Ogham symbol for protection marked on it. I’ll prepare them for you guys tonight since I already have the bark,” Rosa said “However, in order for them to stay active, you have to keep them around your neck the entire time, so don’t take them off for any reason.”

“Well, seems like everyone’s on board with the plan, Scott, what time should we be at the party?” Stiles asked.

“After I get the time of the party from Andrew tomorrow, I’ll text it you guys so you can arrive at the party at about the same time that I will with Andrew so we can minimize conspicuousness,” Scott said “Once we get there, you and Shin will try to follow some of the frat members down to the passageways while Qiana, Rosa, and I will stay at the party and be on our guard in case things get out of hand.”

“So is everyone clear on the plan?” Stiles asked.

“Totally,” Shin said.

“Yep,” Rosa said.

“Well, now that everything’s settled, I gotta get going,” Scott said.

“Wait, why?” Stiles asked.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you that I took the evening shift at the library tonight. I figured, why not, I’m not gonna able to sleep ‘cause of those voices anyway, so why make not make so extra cash and keep myself busy at the same time,” Scott said.

“Okay then, see ya later Scotty,” Stiles said as Scott leaned down to give his boyfriend a kiss that didn’t last that long but was full of the passion and.

Scott parted from Stiles and the rest of the group and quickly picked up a sandwich from one of the shelves lining the front of the cafeteria, paid for it, and began to walk over to the library to begin his shift. The entire way there he tried his best to assure himself that their plan was a good one and that everything would be alright; this ultimately proved unsuccessful, so his entire shift revolved around him trying to ignore an almost crippling amount of anxiety about the day ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed the fic and want to send me feedback or just want to talk, you can reach me on [ twitter ](http://twitter.com/Estraeven) or on [ tumblr ](http://estraeven.tumblr.com).


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

_Stiles_

The four of them arrived at the party that night at around 9:30 p.m. He had chosen to wear his usual attire of a plaid shirt and jeans but with an added backwards facing baseball cap to maximize his frat boy aesthetic. Shin did the same while Qiana and Rosa dressed in their best party outfits, all in the hopes of appearing as completely inconspicuous party goers just there for a good time.

He and Shin had also done their best to conceal the protective amulets that Rosa had given them earlier that morning. Luckily for them, the bags of ground up rowan bark were fairly easily compressed, so they didn’t even show up under their relatively thick undershirts. The group entered through the large front door of the frat house, and headed inside to locate Scott, who had come to the party about ten minutes before them. It was relatively easy to find him as he was currently chatting with a sorority girl at one of the refreshment tables. From the looks of it she was attempting to flirt with him; and, of course, he would not have that.

As the four of them waved and approached Scott, Stiles moved ahead of the group to quickly plant a kiss on Scott’s cheek, making sure to look as sultry as possible. Pulling away from Scott, he could already sense that the girl was quite surprised at the turn of events before her.

“Oh, I uh didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” the girl said as he smiled proudly while putting his arm around Scott’s waist.

“Well, anyway, hope you have a good time,” the girl said as she walked off, clearly annoyed that she couldn’t have Scott for herself.

“Stiles, that was so extra. There was no need for that,” Qiana said.

“What, I was merely correcting her miscalculation,” Stiles responded.

Qiana rolled her eyes at him. “Anyway, Scott, where’s Andrew?”

“He’s over there,” Scott said while gesturing toward the other side of the first floor of the frat house where Andrew was talking to two other frat guys.

“Do both you have what I gave you and did you both conceal it well?” Rosa asked, trying to be as vague as possible to avoid drawing the attention of any passing party-goers. A good tactic, but unfortunately, in this situation, it made her sound like a drug dealer.

“Yup,” Stiles said.

“Yeah, we’re all set to go,” Shin said.

“Alright then, so me, Qiana, and Rosa are going to try to blend in as much as possible for the next few hours while you and Shin keep a close eye on Andrew and his friends. Don’t let them out of your sight and if they leave to go downstairs, follow them _carefully_ ,” Scott said.

“Oh, and if shit starts getting crazy down there or you guys feel like you are in immediate danger, get out and come back up here as quickly as you can, so that Scott and I can protect you,” Qiana said as they their group split up to go about their plan.

“Got it,” Stiles said as he and Shin began to move discreetly towards Andrew’s location.

**###**

After almost an hour of watching Andrew talk with various people at different locations during the party, Stile became worried that maybe the chanting ritual wouldn’t happen that night, or that somehow whoever was leading the rituals had caught on to their plan.

That is until Shin lightly tapped him on the shoulder and whispered “Stiles! Look at Andrew and those other guys with him.”

“What? They’re just been standing there talking, what’s new?” Stiles asked.

“Look closer, they aren’t talking anymore, they’re just standing there doing nothing,” Shin said. That can’t be, Stiles thought, as he stared and squinted a bit in Andrew’s direction, trying to focus on his mouth and the mouths of his friends.

Oh shit! He’s right, Stiles concluded as he noticed that Andrew and his friends’ lips weren’t moving, hell, they weren’t even blinking, just staring off in the distance like robots whose batteries just ran out.

“How long have they been like that?!” Stiles asked.

“Only like a minute, maybe less. I seriously just noticed after I had looked away for a while,” Shin said.

The two of them stood there looking quite stupefied at the sight before them until Andrew and his two friends began to move again.

“Look! They’re heading towards the basement,” Stiles whispered as he gestured Shin to follow him as he began to tail the three of them through the party crowd. Stiles and Shin followed them until they were all standing, in single file for some reason, outside of a rather unassuming door that was clearly labeled BASEMENT. He observed one of the frat guys opening the door and stepping down the stairs while Andrew and his other friend followed him, all moving in perfect synchronization with each other.

“I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and say that they’re probably being compelled by whoever is leading these rituals, because, dude that’s some seriously creepy shit they’re doing right now. Like fucking invasion of the body snatchers,” Shin said.

“Pretty much,” Stiles said before they began following the trio down the stairs to the basement.

As they entered the basement quietly, making sure to stay in the shadows as much as possible, they observed Andrew and the others entering the underground passageways through a door labeled in large, capital letters MAINTENANCE ACCESS ONLY. NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ALLOWED. This warning did not seem to deter them as it appeared the door had already been unlocked earlier, which gave him some indication that most likely, these three were not the first to go down to the passageways that night.

He and Shin followed behind the frat brothers as they walked into the damp, dark passageways underneath the house, their path forward lit only by dim, old maintenance lights. Well, here we go, he thought as they began their descent into the abyss before them, afraid, but also somehow intrigued at what they might find.

**###**

They had walked for what must have been only a few minutes but somehow it felt longer. Maybe it was due to the sameness of all the passages they had walked through, or maybe it was because in such low light, he couldn’t see his watch to tell the time. Sure, he could have pulled out his phone, but he wasn’t willing to risk detection; they had had pretty good luck so far with that, so he didn’t want to jinx it.

After what seemed like an eternity, the single filed trio in front of them stopped abruptly in their tracks. Fuck, oh fuck! They know we’re here, Stiles thought as an overwhelming sense of dread and anxiety came over him, making him feel like vomiting right then and there. Trying to contain his nerves, he looked over to Shin, whose face he could barely see and barely audibly mouthed “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know!” Shin responded in a similar manner.

Just before they were about to start booking it out of there, the trio turned to face a particular section of the wall and stood perfectly still for a few seconds. He and Shin exchanged puzzled looks with each other before a loud creak echoed throughout the passageway followed shortly by a grinding sort of churn that sounded like the operation of some ancient gears.

The small section of wall that the trio had been standing in front of slowly parted and opened inward like a set of double doors. The trio walked through this newly formed opening shortly after.

“What the fuck?” Stiles said as the two of them followed the trio through the opening, being quick about doing so, as they had no idea how long it would remain open.

As he went through the entrance to what was now clear to him to be a surprising long tunnel descending further underground, Stiles did his best to think calming thoughts as they descended into the darkness of the tunnel, with only the light coming from whatever chamber lied at its end to guide them.

A little ways down the tunnel from the entrance, he spotted a small alcove on the right side of the tunnel. At first, he wasn’t sure why it was there, but as he got close, he saw that it contained a fairly large lever. That must have been what opened the gate earlier, but where’s the operator? Stiles wondered. As if some sort of cosmic joke, right as he finished that thought, he heard some footsteps behind him.

As if that alone wasn’t enough to make him shit himself in fear, upon turning around after they had passed by the alcove, he realized that its operator had come out from the shadows and had begun to follow them to the chamber below. Luckily, enough, it appeared that the large man behind them was also being compelled, as Stiles was sure he stared right into the man’s eyes before turning back around.

“Well, it looks like we’re sticking around for whatever is going down there, one of them is right behind us,” Stiles whispered to Shin, who was in front of him in the single file line containing the trio up front, the two of them and the guy behind them.

“Fantastic. This just keeps getting better and better,” Shin whispered back.

A few moments after that disturbing realization, they reached the entrance to the chamber below. It was quite a large circular chamber, light only by a several fire pits spaced out in a ring encircling the center of the room. Several large pillars were also arranged in a similar fashion around the room, presumably to provide structural support for such a cavernous room. There were about two dozen compelled students, all frat brothers and sorority sisters of many different fraternities and sororities, arranged in a circle in the middle of the chamber. As the four compelled students, including Andrew, who had traveled with them down the tunnel joined the circular formation, he wasn’t exactly sure what to do next.

“What we do now?” Stiles whispered to Shin as he was unsure of whether they should take this opportunity to escape or stay and see what exactly went down during these chanting rituals that had been plaguing Scott and Qiana’s minds the past few days.

“We should stay; we didn’t come all this way to leave now. Let’s just try and blend in. If they catch on to us, then we run,” Shin said as the two of them joined the circle, which parted and reformed to include them; he wasn’t quite sure if he would ever get over just how creepy this mind control shit was. I wonder if they even have any idea about what’s going on or what they’re being used for? How did this even happen? Stiles thought, just a few of the growing list of questions without answers that had been forming in his mind since they had entered the basement.

After the circle of people in the middle of the room had fully formed, he and Shin just stood there, waiting in anticipation of what would happen next. Well, everyone’s here so we know who the many voices chanting are but where is the leader, the person who sounded like an old man to Qiana? Stiles thought whilst nervously looking around the room.

He didn’t have to wait long to get the answer to his question, as just a few moments later, a mysterious robed figure entered the room. Although the figure’s voluminous robes obscured most of their body, their face was more visible in the light of the fire pits. The man standing before them had a deeply wrinkled face and tufts of grey hair on his chin, the remnants of what must have been quite the beard in his younger days.

Even though he felt that the man’s face was quite distinctive, he couldn’t begin to guess who the man was or how he had managed to orchestrate this ritual. Obviously, Stiles knew that magic existed, as he had become more and more familiar with the supernatural as well as some of the druidic arts, but he didn’t know that there was magic strong enough to bind and compel others against their will.

Removing himself from such contemplation for the moment, he noticed that the man began walking slowly toward a small, rocky outcropping at the other side of the room. Once he got there, he walked up some steps that had been carved of the same stone at a glacial pace. Reaching the top of the outcropping, portrayed much like a podium by the shadows of the fire pits on both sides of it, the old man simply stood there not uttering a word, yet somehow the compelled students below him began to speak, as if obeying some sort of telepathic command.

 _“Chrii azathoth azathor yog-sothoth yaror ng tulzscha fm’latgh ebumna vulgtlagln nyarlathotep f’gofn ng nyth culn shugg cstell’bsna kadishtu r’luh kadishtu nacch-tith wagh’n phlegeth cgotha ee kadishtu kn’aa,”_ the students all around them said in a guttural tone that was somehow befitting of the tongue in which they spoke.

All was silent for a few seconds after they finished speaking before the old man spoke in the same tongue, but his voice, while hoarse and a bit faint, was somehow more booming than all the student’s voices combined.

 _“Ya hafh’drn nyarlathotep fhayak uh’e geb nyth syha’h ph’n’gha k’yarnak goka ya zhro hupadgh azath ah mnahn’ hlirghh ‘bthnk throd ah f’lliogg li’hee ng fm’latgh f’orr’ee,”_ the old man said.

A few seconds after he finished speaking the students around them repeated what they had said before in a chanting manner, with the only difference being the addition of he and Shin’s voices. They hadn’t spoken to each other since they had first entered the room, but a single terrified look between them decided that the best way for them to remain inconspicuous would be to act as if they were compelled like the others, at least until they saw some opportunity to make a break for the exit.

The chanting, which alternated between the group of students and the old man who appeared to be controlling them went for a long time, although he could not tell exactly how long, all he knew was that he hoped it would be over soon for a number of reasons. The first of which being that his voice was getting pretty hoarse so he didn’t know how long he could keep up with chanting done by those around him, and the second was that even though he knew that he couldn’t be compelled, when he spoke the words of that strange language, he could still feel some sort of indescribable force almost beckoning him to give in.

Quickly looking over at Shin, it appeared he was feeling quite similar, as he had a clear look of worry of his face. And he’s sweating, quite profusely in fact, Stiles noticed. Oh shit, we all are! Stiles realized as he became aware of the rather intense heat in the chamber at the moment; something he had been too focused to notice before.

Briefly glancing around the room, he observed that the fires within the fire pits around the room had seemingly increased not only in size but also in intensity, making it feel like a sweltering furnace. Thankfully, before he could go into full on panic mode and give himself horrifying visions of them all burning alive, the flames quickly subsided and the compelled students fell silent.

Afterwards, the old man proceeded to speak his part of the chant once more before becoming silent himself. Stiles thought that perhaps such silence from both parties indicated that the ceremony or ritual or whatever it could be called was completed for that night. His prediction was confirmed when he saw the man step down from the outcropping and walk into the shadows from whence he came, most likely up a secret tunnel similar to the one him and Shin had come down earlier.

“So, what now?” Shin whispered.

“Well, whatever that was appears to be over and from the looks of it, everyone still seems to be compelled,” Stiles said as he waved a hand in front of the compelled student who stood next to him.

“Yep, no one’s home,” Shin said as he did the same motion to a student close to him.

“Okay, then let’s get the fuck out of here while we can before any other weird shit happens,” Stiles said as they both darted towards entrance to the tunnel. They dashed up its length in mere seconds, both moving as quickly as they could to get to the top. Upon reaching the top of the tunnel, they saw that the secret entrance was again closed by the false wall that had opened for the compelled students earlier.

“Fuck, fuck, what do we do now!” Shin shouted.

“There’s a lever that opens it, I’ll go pull it. Just yell if you see any of them coming up the tunnel!” Stiles shouted back as he ran down the tunnel to get to the alcove he saw when they first came down the tunnel earlier that night.

As soon as he reached the small alcove in which the lever was located, Stiles grabbed the old wooden lever and pulled it back with all his might. It wouldn’t budge.

“Come on, you piece of shit!” Stiles muttered as he moved to get in front of the lever to try to push it back instead. Once again, he pushed with all the strength he could muster. Thankfully, he felt the lever move in front of him, so he continued to push until it wouldn’t move any longer. By the end of that bout of physical exertion, he was wheezing pretty heavily and sweating like a pig, which was great, because it wasn’t like he wasn’t already drenched in his own sweat from being in that hot chamber for who knows how long.

“Stiles, it worked, the door’s open,” Shin yelled down the tunnel “Let’s get outta here!”

Doing his best to overcome his exhaustion from the night’s events, he used most of his remaining energy to walk quickly from the alcove to the top of the tunnel once more, except this time the two of them went through the opening and emerged back in the maintenance passageways below the frat house.

Just as they were about to head back up to the party, Stiles noticed out of the corner of his eye a shift in the light at the end of the tunnel. Squinting a bit from where they were, he could tell that it was caused by a student entering the tunnel.

“Shit, they’re coming up!” Stiles said.

“Let’s back up to the party then, before they do,” Shin said.

Stiles nodded in agreement and the two of them headed back towards the entrance to the basement of the frat house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed the fic and want to send me feedback or just want to talk, you can reach me on [ twitter ](http://twitter.com/Estraeven) or on [ tumblr ](http://estraeven.tumblr.com).


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

_Scott_

Even though he had only just seen Stiles and Shin disappear from sight as they entered the basement in their stealthy pursuit of Andrew and his two friends, he still felt incredibly worried about them. Unfortunately, at the moment, all he could do was wait for their return.

Trying to keep his mind off his worries and appear like an average party-goer at the same time, Scott took it upon himself to have some beer and chat with a number of the other students at the party. He couldn’t get drunk anyway and it would only make him appear that much more sociable.

After a while, most of the conversations seemed to blend together as they all entailed some variation of standard introductory questions, which became just a bit tiresome to answer. However, he fully expected that that would be case, as he didn’t know many people on campus that well since he tended to only hang out with his small group of friends.

Regardless, his socializing with the party guests had been going fairly well until he detected a rise in Rosa’s heartbeat from across the room. At first he thought nothing of it, that she might have simply been surprised or something like that, but just to be sure he attuned his hearing to her voice as he pretended to still be listening to the person he was currently conversing with.

“Dude! Get off me. Don’t grab me, muthafucka!” Rosa said at the other side of the room.

“You know you want me!” an irritated male voice said at the same location.

“Sorry dude… I gotta use the bathroom,” Scott said as he feigned sickness to the guy he been talking to and rushed to Rosa’s aid.

Upon getting close to her and the guy who had at this point successfully pinned her against the wall, he saw that Qiana, who had been closer to Rosa, had already begun to deal with the situation at hand.

“Take your grubby ass hands off her,” Qiana said as Scott observed physically her pulling the man off of Rosa.

“What the fuck, bitch! We were just having some fun. What’s your problem?” the sleazy man said, clearly upset that he had been thwarted.

“First of all, I ain’t no bitch and you will not refer to me as such, and second, as long as you get the fuck outta her space and my face within the next five seconds, I won’t have a problem with you. If you don’t, then I will,” Qiana said.

The guy that had been quite furious a moment before was now silent and distinctly afraid, which was obviously Qiana’s intent

“Fine, whatever,” the dude said with an almost blank, dazed sort of expression as he turned around and looked as if he was about to take his leave. It was, of course, too good to be true, the dude swiftly turned around and attempted to throw a punch at Qiana. Had it not been for Scott’s lightning fast reflexes, the guy’s fist would have connected with her face, and then things would have certainly gotten out of hand.

“Leave. Now,” Scott commanded before letting go of the guy’s arm, stopped mid-punch.

“Alright, alright,” the guy said, quickly backing away from the three of them and blending back into the crowd.

“Are you okay Rosa, did he hurt you?” Scott asked her. He wasn’t a hateful person, quite the opposite actually, but he couldn’t stand guys like that. From the good look he gotten at the student, his attire indicated he was probably a trust fund kid; typical, thinking that his influence and affluence gave him the right to do whatever he wanted.

“Nah he didn’t; he was only on for me a couple of seconds, before Qiana pulled him off me,” Rosa said “Otherwise, I’m fine.”

“And that was but one example why I fuckin’ hate these stupid frat parties. Muthafuckas think they can just roll up on anybody just cause we here. Ugh, anyway, how long have Stiles and Shin been gone?” Qiana said.

“It’s been about… an hour and a half! Shit, I didn’t realize it’s been that long! Do you think we should go down there after them?” Scott asked them.

“No, not yet. Let’s give them just a bit more time. If we go down there after them it could blow our cover,” Rosa said.

“She’s right. I know you’re worried about them, but we don’t know how the magic down there will affect us, it’s too risky. We could end hurting them in an uncontrollable frenzy or worse,” Qiana added.

“Yeah, you’re right. Fine, we’ll give them about another half an hour, but if they’re not back up here by then, we’re going down to get them. I don’t care how dangerous it is,” Scott said, barely containing his anxiousness and worry. They’ll be fine, they’ll be fine, he repeated to himself, trying his best to not imagine endless scenarios of them in imminent danger, just beyond the reach of his protection.

**###**

Luckily enough for them, Scott detected Stiles’ heartbeat on the first floor of the frat house about ten minutes later. As soon as he came to this realization, he practically sprinted through the crowd, focused intently on that sound, blocking out all the other noises around him. Qiana and Rosa were not far behind.

Shortly, the three of them were right next to the entrance to the basement when they saw Stiles and Shin leaning against the wall ahead of them, both looking as if they had just run a marathon through hell.

“Stiles!” Scott said as he went to embrace his boyfriend.

“Scott?” Stiles said as Scott pulled him into a tight, consuming sort of hug. Immediately he could feel Stiles go from the height of tension to quite relaxed in his arms. They held the hug for a moment, as if both silently saying _never let me go_.

“I was so worried about you. Are you okay?” Scott whispered to him.

“Yeah we’re both fine Scotty, I’m just so… tired,” Stiles said, as if doing so required a great amount of effort on his part.

Releasing Stiles from his arms, he looked down to discover that his entire shirt was now soaked with Stiles’ sweat.

Stiles smiled. “Sorry about that.”

“What the fuck happened to you guys down there?” Rosa asked.

“A lot. I think we have some definite leads on what’s going on, but we can’t talk about them here,” Shin said, clearly shaken up by his experience.

“He’s right. They could hear and the man could know,” Stiles said.

“Wait what?” Qiana said.

“Yeah, what are you guys talking about?” Rosa asked.

“We’ll explain later, but we have to leave. Now! They’ll be back up here in just a few minutes and I don’t know what will happen if they recognize us,” Stiles said.

“Aight, let’s get the fuck up outta here then. I’ve had enough of drunken frat boys to last me a lifetime,” Qiana said.

“I completely agree,” Rosa said.

“We’ll use the back entrance, it’ll draw less attention to ourselves,” Scott said.

The five of them exited out of a set of French doors that lead out to a raised patio in the backyard of the house. They pass by the few people on the patio to descend the attached stairs down into the backyard proper, making sure not to seem like they were in a hurry. Within a few minutes, they reached the sidewalk near the front entrance to the frat house, well out of earshot of any of the people inside.

“Is it safe to talk now guys?” Scott asked Stiles and Shin.

“Yeah, but I’d rather we wait tomorrow morning. I have a feeling that whatever we’re gonna have to do to research and hopefully stop this threat is going to take a lot of energy, and frankly, I’m on the verge of passing out right now,” Stiles said, his voice sounding noticeably hoarse.

“I agree,” Shin said, sounding similarly exhausted.

“We really shouldn’t delay our investigation, but you guys seem to be in no condition to go forward with it. Really, we’re pretty tired as well,” Rosa said, gesturing towards herself and Qiana.

“Yep, and I have a feeling that tomorrow’s going to be pretty tiring as well, so I think it would best if we just try to get some sleep tonight,” Qiana suggested.

“Yeah, that sounds good. So, we’ll meet up early tomorrow morning at the library in one of the study rooms on the fifth floor. There shouldn’t be that many people there on a Saturday, so we shouldn’t be interrupted or bothered,” Scott said “Does that sound good to everyone?”

“Yep, sounds good to me,” Stiles said.

“Same here,” Shin said, yawning a bit.

“Sounds fine to me,” Rosa said.

“Any particular room in mind?” Qiana asked.

“I’m not sure, I’ll just have to see if any are available tomorrow morning, hopefully one is, but I won’t know until I look at the registration sheet,” Scott replied.

“Oh okay, see you guys tomorrow,” Qiana said as she and Rosa started walking towards Crenshaw Dormitory.

“See you tomorrow Scott,” Shin said as he began to walk off to Milton Dormitory.

Stiles was about to follow suit when Scott came closer to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re sure you don’t need to me to stay with you tonight. I will, you know, if you want me to,” Scott said.

“As much as I’d like that, you should go back to your room. I’ll explain why later tomorrow, but for now, let’s just say that it would be best if Andrew didn’t think anything was going on with you or that you’re avoiding him for some reason,” Stiles said.

“Okay, I trust you on that, but, if anything happens, or you need me, just text me. I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you,” Scott said. He gave Stiles a good night kiss that was anything but chaste before they parted for the night.

Stiles smiled. “Love you too, Scotty,” Stiles said as he turned around and began walking quickly in the direction of his dorm, probably trying to catch up with Shin.

After everyone had gone, and Scott was left alone with his thoughts as he walked back to his dorm, several doubts swirled with his mind. What’s going on? Will we be able to stop it? Will anyone get hurt?

Relax, Relax. There’s nothing you do about for now, so just take your mind off it and try to get some sleep. Staying up with worry isn’t going to make things any easier for you, he told himself as he unlocked his dorm room door. He quickly undressed down to his boxers and got under the covers, trying his best to be at peace with the night’s events and focus his energy towards the day ahead.

**###**

_Stiles_

It had been only about ten minutes since they had both arrived back at their dorm room, but Shin was already sound asleep, clearly drained from their adventure in the passageways that night.

Some adventure, I almost shit myself several times within the span of a few hours, a new record, he thought as he wearily laid down on his bed.

What little energy he had left, he used tossing and turning in his bed, trying his best to keep horrible visions of what happened that night and what could happen in the future out of his mind. He became so frustrated with himself that he started crying, not loudly or overly tearful, just a dry, sort of sorrowful cry.

Everything was going so well, why’d this bullshit have to start happening again? Stiles thought as he trembled just a bit. I wonder what that man has planned. Do I really want to know what lies beyond of the veil of my knowledge? What will happen? What it will do to all of us? He wondered fearfully as his body finally allowed him the sweet embrace of slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed the fic and want to send me feedback or just want to talk, you can reach me on [ twitter ](http://twitter.com/Estraeven) or on [ tumblr ](http://estraeven.tumblr.com).


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

_Stiles_

The blare of his alarm awoke him at seven o’clock that Saturday morning from his turbulent sleep. He sat up in his bed and briefly rubbed the sleep from his eyes and some drool off his chin. As he was doing so, he heard the shower running in the bathroom and observed light coming from the crack underneath the bathroom door. Shin must have woken up before me. Not surprised, I mean he was passed out before I even went to sleep last night. I wonder how he’s handling all this?

While he was waiting for Shin to finish with the bathroom, Stiles made sure both of their laptops were fully charged as they would surely need them for the research they would be doing at the library. After all, there weren’t any computers on the fifth floor and most of the computer’s in the library were ancient, so they would be of little use to them anyway. After he finished with that, he really had nothing else to prepare for that morning, so he decided to work on some math homework. Not because he randomly developed some desire to be particularly studious, but rather because he always got really focused whenever he did math problems; the kind of focus that allowed him to not dwell on his troubles for the moment.

About fifteen minutes later, Shin exited the bathroom and went over to their shared closet to get dressed.

“Dude, how early did you wake up?” Stiles asked.

“Around five or so; to be honest, I would have slept longer but all that shit that happened last night kinda gave me nightmares,” Shin replied as he put on some pants and a long sleeved shirt.

“I understand, pretty much the same for me really, but I guess I’m more used to it” Stiles said as he undressed from the clothes he hadn’t bothered to change out of the night before and walked towards the bathroom.

“Hey, Stiles?” Shin said.

“Yeah, what is it?” Stiles asked.

“Did you guys really deal with this sort of shit back in Beacon Hills, ‘cause you seemed to handle yourself pretty well last night. I mean, at least better than I did,” Shin replied.

“Well, sort of. I mean, I’ve told you the stories, and besides some occasional embellishment of my part here and there, all of it really happened,” Stiles said “But with all the shit we dealt with back then, it was never anything like the shit we’re dealing with now. That was next-level type of bullshit last night.”

“That’s comforting I guess,” Shin said.

“Really, though, you did great, and don’t let my stunning courage and bravado fool you,” Stiles said as he puffed out his chest briefly “I was also freaking out and about to shit myself yesterday.”

Shin smiled. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem, buddy,” Stiles said as he walked into the bathroom and closed the door.

He knew that Scott wanted them both outside the library at eight that morning, so that they could hopefully get everything they needed to get done before the librarians arrived for the library’s official opening time later that afternoon, so he tried to be as quick with his shower as possible. It was difficult though, as he thoroughly enjoyed how warm and relaxing the hot water felt on his skin, as if almost cleansing him of his worries for a moment.

He ended up taking less than ten minutes, which he thought was reasonable, and after he had gotten fully dressed and both he and Shin were ready to go, it was only about twenty minutes to eight, so they still had plenty of time to get to the library.

**###**

_Scott_

Where are they? Scott thought as it was already 8:15 and Stiles and Shin hadn’t arrived at the front entrance to Orne library yet. He had just texted Stiles a reminder a few minutes ago, but he couldn’t help but feel worried. Fortunately enough, Scott spotted them at the end of the sidewalk leading towards the library. They arrived just about a minute later.

“Where have you guys been?” Scott asked as they arrived, a bit puzzled and annoyed at them showing up late, as himself, Rosa, and Qiana had been waiting outside the library for half an hour already. To be fair though, they had arrived earlier than the set time due to their own anxiousness about their continuing investigation.

“Relax, I got your text, I just forgot to text you back that me and Shin went to get some breakfast at the cafeteria before coming over here,” Stiles said as they both held up their half-eaten breakfast burritos “It just turned out the lines were longer than we thought.”

“Alright then, let’s get started,” Rosa said as she used her work ID and access code to open up the electronic lock on the library’s front entrance. The five of them went in after her. All the lights switched on automatically as they went towards the front desk. Rosa quickly went behind the corner and grabbed one of the keys to the study rooms on the fifth floor.

“All the study room keys for the fifth floor seem to be there, so we’ll probably be the only ones up there today, aside from the occasional students looking for books” Rosa said as the five of them headed to the main elevator on the first floor. After they all got in the elevator, Scott pressed the button for the fifth floor.

Upon arriving on the top floor of Orne library, they exited the elevator and followed Rosa to Study Room 1. She used the key to open the locked door and they all went inside.

“Okay, so we have this room for four hours, afterwards, we have to leave and I have to put the key back. I mean it’s unlikely that anyone else will need this room today, but policy is policy and I’m not really in the mood to agitate Ms. Flores today,” Rosa said as they sat down at the large table in the center of the small room.

“How should we start?” Scott asked the group.

“Before we do anything, Stiles and Shin should give us their best recap of what the fuck happened last night in those passageways,” Qiana said.

“Yeah, guys what happened?” Rosa asked the two of them.

Stiles and Shin proceeded to give them the best recollection of the previous night’s events that they could muster, including descriptions that disturbed Scott greatly. Reflecting back on how worried he had been about them the night before, he felt that such worry was certainly justified, as he listened to them talk of compelled students and a ritual chamber lit by magical fire pits. By the time they finished going over what had happened, Rosa, Qiana and him all had equally confused looks on their faces.

“Well, now I understand why you two looked like you were on the brink of death yesterday. That’s some really fucked up shit,” Qiana said.

“Ah, I see that that’s also why you guys were acting so paranoid last night. Do you think that the man can use the students under his control as his eyes and ears?” Rosa asked.

“We have no idea, but we figure it’s best to just be on the safe side and assume that he can,” Shin said.

“Alright then, so, how are we going to stop whatever this guy has planned?” Scott asked them.

“First, I think we should try to decipher or at least find out some more info about the language of the chants and what they mean,” Stiles replied.

“I agree, but Stiles, how much of the chant do you remember, ‘cause last night it was so clear in my mind. We repeated it dozens of times, it should be. But, for some reason, my memory of both chants is just so unclear,” Shin said.

“Yeah, I feel the same way. It probably has something to do with the fact that whatever magic was trying to compel us last night didn’t succeed due to our protection amulets, but clearly it still affected us. I can still recall a few words though” Stiles said.

“Me too, a few words here and there,” Shin said as the two of them began to scribble down the words of the chant that they remembered well enough from the night before.

After a few minutes of that, the two of them had come up with a list four words that they both recognized.

“Are you guys sure these are spelled correctly?” Scott asked them, initially puzzled at the words before him. Well, this just keeps getting more and more confusing. I couldn’t begin to guess what language these are in?

“Well, I can’t really spell check them, Scott, but I just know they are. Don’t ask me how,” Stiles said.

“Yeah, I’m confident they’re spelled right. Like we told you before, there’s just something special about the language those chants are in. When we spoke the words, for a brief moment, it was almost as if some of the words had been seared into our minds. I’m guessing that these few are particularly important since they’re still crystal clear while the rest are fuzzy,” Shin said.

Taking that information into consideration, Scott looked at the piece of paper with the four words on that:

_Azathoth_

_Yog-Sothoth_

_Tulzscha_

_Nyarlathotep_

“Well, I guess the best thing for us to do would be to search for any info about them online,” Scott said.

First, Stiles entered the words into Google Translate to see if they matched any major existing language. They didn’t, so Stiles and Shin both started doing google searches for all the words. After, sorting through unrelated results, they both came to the same result that linked to a Wikipedia article on a particular book.

“We found all the words on the list in this excerpt from a book called _Necronomicon_ ,” Stiles said as he turned his laptop so that everyone could get a good look “The article says that it was published in 1910 by a guy named Peter Lang.”

“Well, that sounds fuckin creepy, what kind of book is that?” Qiana said.

“It’s supposedly a detailed account of the workings, rituals, and practices of a cult called the _Followers of the Ones Beyond_ ,” Stiles said as he turned the laptop back around to face him so that he could continue scanning the page. He’s more worried about this than he lets on, Scott thought after noticing the very slight shakiness in Stiles’ voice.

“Apparently it’s actually a translation of a much older book written in the 8th century by Abdullah al-Ḥaẓrad. However, it also says that the book, and all of its translations, are often regarded as works of fiction, as there hasn’t been any evidence found to substantiate any of the book’s findings or observations,” Shin said while scanning the article on his laptop.

“Well, there’s no evidence for werewolves either, but here we are. Seriously though, is there any information about where a copy of the book could be found?” Qiana asked.

“Not really, all it says is that it’s been out of print for decades,” Stiles replied.

“There might be a copy in the special archives of the library,” Rosa said.

“You really think so?” Scott asked.

“Well, it’s a slim chance, but I know that this university prides itself on having a large collection of occult and otherwise obscure texts in its possession, so it’s possible,” Rosa replied.

“Well, that’s something, but can I remotely access the library catalog from my laptop?” Stiles asked.

“Yeah you can, just go the library home page and find the catalog link,” Scott said.

A few seconds later Stiles replied “Found it. What now?”

“Go to the advanced search field and select the include archives option from the drop-down menu,” Rosa said as she paced about the room looking quite stressed out.

“Yes! There’s one copy in the archives,” Stiles exclaimed.

“Great! Which shelf is it on?” Rosa asked.

“Doesn’t say, it just says: ID SA-19,” Stiles answered.

“The number means the shelf number, so it’s on shelf 19 in the archives,” Scott said.

“So, should we all go down there?” Qiana asked.

“Nah, it would be best if just me and Scott go down there, because if any one catches us, we can just make a work-related excuse for being down there,” Rosa said.

“Yeah, she’s right. Stiles, I’ll text you whatever information we find,” Scott said as he and Rosa were about to exit the study room and head down to the archives.

“Okay,” Stiles said as he gave them a thumb’s up.

“See you guys in a bit,” Rosa said as they exited the room and headed towards the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed the fic and want to send me feedback or just want to talk, you can reach me on [ twitter ](http://twitter.com/Estraeven) or on [ tumblr ](http://estraeven.tumblr.com).


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

_Scott_

As soon as they exited the elevator on the first floor, he and Rosa walked briskly to the entrance of the special archives. Rosa entered the same code she had entered to allow them entry a few days before and the door to the archives unlocked.

“I’m surprised they didn’t change the code,” Scott said as they went into the archives.

“Apparently, they only change the codes once every couple of months. I heard Ms. Flores complaining that she couldn’t remember the new code a few weeks ago,” Rosa said as they walked towards shelf 19, where _Necronomicon_ was located.

Upon reaching the shelf, Scott removed the book from the bookshelf and looked at it briefly. It was really a rather unassuming book, as the bindings of many early 20th century books tended to be; just a plain black cover with its name printed in fairly large white letters on the front cover and the spine.

The two of them sat down on the floor in front of the bookshelf, with Rosa sitting right beside him while he opened the book to the table of contents.

“We don’t have enough time to read through the entire book, just try to find a chapter relating to rituals or ceremonies, because that seems what we’re dealing with here” Rosa said as he skimmed through the table of contents.

“Chapter 7: Summoning and communicating with those beyond,” Scott read aloud.

“That’s sounds promising,” Rosa said.

Scott nodded in agreement and proceeded to begin reading the chapter. It contained descriptions of what the author referred to as natural forces of a non-cognizant nature that existed beyond the boundaries of this universe. They were apparently called the _Ones Beyond_. Their names match the words that Stiles and Shin wrote on that paper upstairs, he thought as he continued to read on.

After reading several pages on these _Ones Beyond_ , he deduced that the first three names were the most important: _Azathoth_ , the aspect of Chaos, _Yog-Sothoth_ , the aspect of Time, and _Tulzscha_ , the corrupted flame of the Pit. The last name on the list _, Nyarlathotep_ , described as the spawn and avatar of the previous. Rosa must have been reading along with him, albeit at a sort of awkward angle, as she had this disturbed and confused look on her face the entire time he was reading.

“Okay, what the fuck was this guy smoking? Like, seriously!” Rosa said.

“Just a few years ago, I would’ve honestly been as skeptical about this you are, but really, if all sorts of supernaturals exist in this world, then maybe it’s not that much of a stretch that other stuff does too?” Scott suggested.

Rosa sighed a bit and slumped against the bookshelf “Yeah that makes sense. It’s just that you know, you think you know shit, and that you’re privy to the true nature of things, but then it’s like, nope, there’s all this other shit out there you couldn’t have possibly thought of.”

“I know what you mean,” Scott said as he briefly reflected on how he felt the exact same way during his sophomore year of high school when he was first bitten and his life changed forever.

After sitting there quietly for a moment, he reminded himself of the limited time they had in the archives, and went back to reading the book from where he left off. The rest of the chapter detailed instructions for a ritual that involved summoning Nyarlathotep to Earth, as it was the only way to communicate with the Ones Beyond, because they were trapped in planes of existence that couldn’t interact with those of this universe.

“Oh shit,” Rosa said, interrupting Scott’s reading.

“What?” Scott asked.

“Read the next page,” Rosa said, looking quite shocked.

Scott did so, a bit puzzled at first as to what had freaked Rosa out, until he came to the following paragraphs:

The chants below must be uttered repetitively each night for the ritual to succeed. How many repetitions are necessary will be clear once the chanting has begun. The necessary chants are shown below alongside their rough English translation:

 ** _Chrii azathoth azathor yog-sothoth yaror ng tulzscha fm’latgh ebumna vulgtlagln nyarlathotep f’gofn ng nyth culn shugg cstell’bsna kadishtu r’luh kadishtu nacch-tith wagh’n phlegeth cgotha ee kadishtu kn’aa_** (This should be spoken by the followers as directed by the leader).

 **Translation:** We, followers of _Azathoth_ , aspect of chaos, _Yog-sothoth_ , aspect of time, and _Tulzscha_ , the flame of the pit, pray to _Nyarlathotep_ , their child and servant. We summon him to the realm of Earth. We ask for understanding of hidden knowledge on _Naach-tith_ residing in the realm of information. We wish for answers to all known questions.

 ** _Ya hafh’drn nyarlathotep fhayak uh’e geb nyth syha’h ph’n’gha k’yarnak goka ya zhro hupadgh azath ah mnahn’ hlirghh ‘bthnk throd ah f’lliogg li’hee ng fm’latgh f’orr’ee_** (This should be spoken only by the leader).

 **Translation:** I, summoner of _Nyarlathotep_ offer the people here to serve for the eternity beyond death in exchange for granting me the power born of the realm of chaos to make the worthless heretics’ bodies tremble, wrack their minds with pain, and burn their souls.

It is imperative that the ritual be repeated for the exactly as described below for seven nights. If all goes well, _Nyarlathotep_ will appear. Also, it is of paramount importance that the leader of the ritual turns their face away from _Nyarlathotep_ when it appears, as even the slightest glance may be too much for the human mind to handle, as despite one’s willpower, the fragility of the mind cannot be escaped.

“Fuck!” Scott said as he abruptly stood “They’ve already done the ritual the past five nights. We only have two nights left to stop that guy before he sacrifices them all!”

“How the fuck are we supposed to do that?” Scott said, his voice shaken by fear.

“Scott!” Rosa said as she shook him briefly out of his panicked state “We can do it! I think I know something that could work, it’s a long shot, but it could work.”

“R-Really” Scott said as he did his best to calm himself down “ What’s your plan?”

“Well, since there seems to be pretty powerful magic involved with this ritual, what we need is a very powerful counter spell. I learned about them when my mom trained me in the druidic arts; they’re spells that are cast to cancel out other spells. The most powerful counter spell was actually developed by a witch named Fernanda Valencia in the 15th century,” Rosa said.

“But, I thought you were only trained as druid, are you sure you’d be able to cast spells like that?” Scott asked.

“Oh, sure. You see, Scott, druid and witch are just two different names for magic users. All semantics really. We’re basically the same, the only variation being how one views oneself in relation to one’s use of magic. Druids view it as their duty to maintain the balance between the natural and the supernatural while witches and warlocks use magic to achieve their own ends,” Rosa said.

“But this Fernanda person, she was a good witch right?” Scott asked.

“Oh yes, she used her great talent for magic to create many of the protective spells that are still used today. The most powerful counter spell she developed is called _The Witch’s Hammer_ ,” Rosa replied.

“Great, so how do we use it to stop the ritual?” Scott asked.

“Well, unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The spell itself is widely known, but the only one who knew how to cast it was her, and she never made it publicly available, the only copies of the spell around today would be found in either her personal journals or in the writings of her close friends at the time,” Rosa said “Fortunately for us, I have a copy of it.”

“But you just said…,” Scott responded, wondering how Rosa had gotten a hold of a copy.

“Well, it just so happens that Valencia is one of my ancestors, on my mom’s side, so a couple of days ago, when you and Qiana told us about the strange dreams you were having, I anticipated that magic could be involved, but I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to freak you guys out any more than you already were,” Rosa said, as she pulled out some pieces of paper out of her backpack.

“So, instead, I gave my mom a call and asked her to scan the relevant pages for the spell out of a copy of Valencia’s spell book that was transcribed by my great-grandmother,” Rosa said as she showed the scanned images of the spell book’s pages to him.

“This looks complicated,” Scott said as he looked over the numerous diagrams and paragraphs detailing the exact parameters of the spell.

“It is, but I’ve spent a good amount of time the last few days memorizing the spoken portion and as long as we can get the positioning right, it should work. But, I’ll save the details for when we get back upstairs. It’ll be easier for us to formulate a plan that way,” Rosa said.

“Good point. I’ll go make some photocopies of chapter seven so the others can read it” Scott said as he walked towards the copier.

“Okay. While, you’re doing that I’m just gonna briefly skim the rest of the book to see if there’s any more information on the kind of magic we’re up against,” Rosa said as she sat back down of the floor and went back to reading.

Copying the pages that made up chapter seven of Necronomicon only took a few minutes, but by the time Scott came back, Rosa had already put the book back on the shelf and was standing at the exit, waiting for him.

“Did you find any other useful information in the book?” Scott asked as he walked up to her.

“Nope, mostly just more of the cult’s mythology, which is somewhat interesting, but ultimately doesn’t really apply to our situation. Although remind me to make a complete photocopy of that book after this whole thing is taken care of. It could still prove useful in the future” Rosa said.

“I’ll make sure to remind you,” Scott said as the two of them exited the special archives and took the elevator back up to the fifth floor.

**###**

_Stiles_

If I have to wait any longer, I’m going to lose my mind. Come on, Scott, text me something, anything, he thought after checking his phone for probably the fiftieth time in the past half hour.

As if having read his mind, Scott and Rosa returned to the study room only moments later.

“What did you guys find out? What do we have to do?” Stiles asked at lightning speed, catching them both of guard.

“Stiles chill, I was about to get to it,” Rosa said as she place the photocopied pages of both the books on the table for the rest of the group to look at and read through.

He could just feel his anxiety about the whole situation getting worse as he and the others looked through papers from the book they had looked up earlier, but when Rosa gave them a summary of what was detailed in the book, he realized that he was not the only one who felt that way.

“So let me get this straight. We have three days to stop some old man from summoning the representative of some alien gods or some shit, which would result in him gaining a shitload of power at expense of many people’s lives. Power, which he’ll use do even more evil shit,” Shin said with a baffled expression “And I thought werewolves existing was out there.”

“Apparently, we just the tip of the fucking iceberg,” Qiana said “Truly though, I have no words to describe how absolutely bizarre this week has been.”

“Same here,” Stiles said “But, Rosa, you also said earlier that you might have a way to stop the ritual from going to completion.”

“Yeah, there’s this really powerful counter spell that I’m confident will be able to disrupt the ritual and prevent Nyarlathotep from being summoned to this plane of existence. However, it is a bit difficult to execute and will require a lot of coordination,” Rosa said.

“Of course, why would it be that easy?” Stiles said.

“Contain yourself, I haven’t even given ya the details yet, it really isn’t that bad. It just requires a bit of positioning is all,” Rosa said as she gestured to Shin to give her his laptop.

“Did you finish that graphics model I asked you do for me this morning?” Rosa asked Shin.

“Yep, I used the pics of the university blueprints you sent me to create a very rudimentary 3D model in java that is pretty much to scale with the section of the campus near the frat house as it is today. There should be an icon for it in the upper right corner of the desktop,” Shin said as he directed Rosa to the location of his program.

“Found it,” Rosa said as she opened the graphical model in a full screen window and turned the laptop towards the group. The model was nothing spectacular, just a bunch of rectangles of different heights on a black background.

“Are those rectangles supposed to represent the campus buildings?” Scott asked.

“Yup, their heights roughly correspond with the actual heights of the buildings,” Shin replied.

“Which is important because _The_ _Witch’s Hammer_ , the counter spell that we’ll be trying to cast, is a tiered spell that requires a particular setup to properly amplify its power,” Rosa said as she brought up an edit menu that allowed her to place different colored markers and draw simple pictures on the model; he was familiar with such a setup from the introduction to graphical programming class he had taken the previous spring, but he was nowhere near as good at graphics as Shin was.

“So basically, what the spell does is channel the magical energy of the moon into a concentrated beam of energy that can be directed toward a source of strong magic, such as a ritual close to completion,” Rosa said as she gestured toward the model displayed on the laptop beside her.

“The first part of the spell is the focusing of lunar energy into a symbol called the _Elder Sign_. It looks like this,” Rosa said as she showed them the relevant picture of it in Valencia’s book. To him, it looked like a sort of curved pentacle that had a small flame in the middle with half-ovals on either side of it.

“The energy focused by the Elder sign must then be passed through two amplification circles in order to achieve its highest state of power. The amplifying circles look like this,” Rosa said as she turned over one of the scanned pages and pointed to several examples of it. These look just like Scott’s tattoo, he thought as he examined the image of an amplification circle and compared it to his boyfriend’s armband tattoo.

“I can assure you, it’s just a coincidence Stiles,” Rosa said as she must have noticed his comparison.

“What are you guys talking about?” Scott asked them.

“Oh nothing, just me being silly and over analyzing everything as usual,” Stiles said, sighing to himself afterwards.

“Oh, okay,” Scott said, briefly furrowing his brow in confusion.

“Anyway, the Elder sign and the two amp circles must be placed as different heights due to the nature of the channeled beam,” Rosa said.

“Why?” Stiles asked.

“As I went over Valencia’s notes last night, I found that she states that such an arrangement for the spell made it much harder for her enemies to disrupt it as they would have to destroy all three symbols at once for the spell to cancel,” Rosa said “So, yeah it’s tedious and a bit convoluted but for good reason.”

“So, where are we gonna be putting these symbols at?” Qiana asked.

“I looked over the campus model earlier this morning, and it seems like the best places would be here, here, and here,” Rosa said as she put a star symbol high on the side of the bell tower on the edge of the quad, a circle symbol in the field in front of Haldermann Hall, and another amplification circle symbol inside Haldermann Hall.

“Rosa, where’s the second amp. circle symbol supposed to be?” Scott asked.

“It doesn’t show that well on here, but it should be in room HHB6. You know, the room that you guys could hear the chanting most clearly from,” Rosa replied.

“Ah okay, I see,” Scott said.

“How are we going to get the Elder Sign that high on the bell tower?” Qiana asked.

“Well, that would be your role in the plan,” Rosa said as she zoomed all the way out on the model to put it in a bird’s eye view “We’ll go up to the very top of the tower. I’ll perform the spoken part of the spell while you draw the Elder Sign with chalk on the front face of the tower.”

“So, how are you going to get up the side of the tower?” Shin asked Qiana.

“I’ll just climb it. I figured out that I could use my claws to climb when I did a little bit of rock climbing on vacation a few summers ago,” Qiana said confidently “Although I’m assuming I would be climbing down from the top balcony as that should be quicker and leave less markings on the tower.”

“Yup, that’s pretty much what I had planned; that way you can just climb down a bit from the balcony, make the symbol and be back up in a few minutes, without leaving too much of an indication that you were there,” Rosa said.

“Sounds good to me,” Qiana said.

“After you finish with that, you and Scott will use the same chalk you used for the Elder sign to draw the first amplification circle on the ground where the beam of lunar energy will be projected from the tower, which should about here,” Rosa said as she pointed to a spot on the model near the tower.

“Scott should come with you, because if this warlock is as powerful as I think he is, he’ll realize what we’re trying to do and try to stop us. You may need to defend yourselves,” Rosa said.

“So after we do that, we’ll do the same thing with the second circle in the basement of Haldermann?” Scott asked.

“Yeah, you should go there as soon as the first amp circle activates. Believe me, you’ll know when it does,” Rosa said as she gave Shin’s laptop back to him after she finished presenting her plan to the group.

“Wait, I might be missing something but what do we do?” Stiles asked, gesturing to himself and Shin.

“Nothing much with the actual ritual, all you two have to do is attend the ritual again on its final night to try to save as many of the people down there as possible” Rosa said as she went took a seat.

“Wait, we’re not gonna do the counter spell tonight?” Shin asked.

“Unfortunately, we have to wait until the seventh and final night of the ritual to perform the spell. It’s cutting it extremely close, I know, but we need the ritual’s magic to be at its strongest to ensure that the energy beam is able to find its location after it passes through the second amplification circle,” Rosa replied “If we try it before then, it might work, but if it doesn’t, we’ll have achieved nothing but alerting the warlock to our activities and ruining any chance of stopping him.”

“Makes sense, if we’re gonna do this, we should do it when we have the highest chance to succeed,” Shin said.

“So, how would we help the people down there though? Wouldn’t the counter spell break his hold on them?” Stiles asked.

“It will but Nyarlathotep might be just about to enter this plane of existence at that point, and the book was quite clear that if anyone so much as glances at it, they’ll basically just lose their minds. That includes you two, as the amulets won’t protect you from that,” Rosa answered.

“Good to know,” Stiles said as he gulped, now even more afraid of what they would have to do, but he had to be strong. He and Shin were integral to the plan, and he had to do his best to help Andrew and the others, despite his strong discomfort with having that much responsibility. He was sure that Scott noticed a rise in his heart rate or some other sort of sign of his distress, as Scott briefly turned to him and gave him a reassuring look, as if to say I believe in you, I know you can do this. He always wished he had the confidence in himself that Scott had in him, but it was still good to know that someone believed in him. That’s not to say that his new friends didn’t, it’s just that they hadn’t seen him under serious pressure and didn’t know how easy it was for him to break instead of bend.

“That’s great that it’ll stop the ritual, but how the fuck are we going to explain what just happened to all the students afterwards?” Qiana asked.

“Actually, I was about to get to that. The last part of the Witch’s hammer spell was devised by Valencia for specifically that purpose. She states in her notes that a protective, defensive spell is useless unless it can protect both the body and the minds of innocents used against their will,” Rosa replied.

“So, what, will it erase their memories of the ritual?” Stiles asked.

“Oh, it’ll do much more than that. Not only will it erase their memories of the ritual that night, but it will make them completely open to suggestion about what had occurred,” Rosa said “Which basically means that it’ll erase their memories and allow someone not affected by the spell to tell them what to remember and they’ll believe it, no matter how outlandish the false memories may be.”

“But, isn’t that really messed up though; I mean we save them from compulsion by this warlock dude, and then we fill their minds with made up stuff so that they’ll think that none of it ever happened,” Scott said.

He had to admit that it was fucked up, and he could tell that it was really bothering Scott, but unfortunately, he was pretty sure that it was preferable to somehow convincing two dozen strangers of the non-existence of supernatural phenomena.

“You’re right Scott, it is, but sometimes it’s just necessary to fight fire with fire, as it were. The spell won’t compel them or anything, it’ll merely allow them to continue living their lives in the version of reality they are most familiar with. Truly that’s better than having them question everything they know and possibly forcing them into a state of crippling anxiety, paranoia, and a multitude of other possible negative mental states,” Rosa said.

“I’m still not comfortable with the plan, but I realize that it’s what we have to do and that while me, Stiles, and our friends and family back home may have reacted fairly well to finding out about supernatural stuff and magic and all that, I understand that many wouldn’t have been able to handle finding that stuff out as well as we did, or at all really,” Scott said.

“That’s exactly my point. So, is everyone clear on what we have to do?” Rosa asked the group. They all nodded their heads in agreement except for Stiles.

“What is it, Stiles?” Rosa asked.

“Uh, I was just wondering, after I give the memory speech or whatever you wanna call it, how do I get them to, you know, go back to normal?” Stiles asked her in response.

“Oh, thanks for reminding me, I nearly forgot to tell you that part. Valencia wrote in her notes on the spell that the phrase that will conclude the memory insertion portion of the spell is _everything is as it should be, return to your lives as they were_ ,” Rosa said.

“Everyone clear now?” Rosa asked the group again

“Okay, then, we’ll meet up in front of the clock tower on Sunday night at ten. The ritual should be just about to start at that time, so we’ll have about an hour and a half to execute the spell, although it shouldn’t take anywhere near that amount of time,” Rosa said.

Afterwards, they all packed up their things, exited the study room, and took the elevator back down to the first floor.

“In the meantime though, I think it would be best if we all just went about things as usual until then. Worrying about this whole thing isn’t gonna help anyone,” Scott said, trying his best to ease everyone’s minds as the group walked outside through the front entrance. Stiles was sure that it worked as Scott had this calming, gentle of presence about him that could8 make someone feel better just by being around him. Of course, maybe only he felt that way because Scott had always been there for him, a constant in his life, supportive of all of his endeavors.

“Good idea, Scott. Well, I’ll see you guys later; I gotta get to work,” Shin said as he walked away from the group towards Haldermann Hall.

“So what are you two gonna do now?” Stiles asked Qiana and Rosa.

“Well, I gotta finish a lab report due next week, so I’m just gonna eat some breakfast, and spend the rest of the day on it,” Qiana replied.

“Yeah, I have bunch of writing assignments due on Monday, some of which I haven’t even started yet. So, that’s gonna be my weekend,” Rosa said, laughing a bit afterwards.

“Oh okay, we’re just gonna head to back to my dorm to relax for a bit and then get to work on some stuff,” Stiles said as he put his arm around Scott’s shoulder.

“Oh I see. I’m sure y’all gonna get right to work,” Qiana said.

Scott blushed.

“Anyway, text us if need anything,” Scott said.

“We will,” Rosa said as she and Qiana began walking back to their dorm room.

“They seem to handling this pretty well, you know considering the three of them didn’t really have the same sort of experiences with the supernatural that we did,” Stiles said as they walked back towards his dorm room.

“Yeah they’re doing really well. I’m really glad we meet them. I don’t how we would have handled this all by ourselves. I’m sure we could have asked Malia, Kira, Lydia, and everyone else to come here and help, but I don’t want to take them away from their lives to help us deal with this,” Scott said.

“I agree, plus, because our original pack is all across the country at the moment, it would have been difficult to gather everyone up to help us with this, so I’m glad they’re here as well, especially Rosa, she’s really on top of her game when it comes to magic and stuff. Much more helpful than Deaton or Morrell ever were,” Stiles said.

Scott laughed. “Yeah, you could say that again.”

A few minutes later, the two of them reached Stiles dorm room, went back inside, and tried their best to relax and keep their minds off of what was to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed the fic and want to send me feedback or just want to talk, you can reach me on [ twitter ](http://twitter.com/Estraeven) or on [ tumblr ](http://estraeven.tumblr.com).


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

_Scott_

A few hours later that day, he and Stiles were doing homework and studying for their various classes in Stiles’ dorm. They were alone since Shin was still at work at the computer center, so they cuddled up with each other. Stiles was laying on the bed with his head in Scott’s lap as he read through one of his reading assignments for his history class, while Scott was reading through a novel for his English class.

They had actually gotten a fair bit of work done so far, which is a surprise as whenever they were together, they often had difficulty focusing on anything but each other. However, Scott still had some thoughts, just curious wonderings really, on the stuff they had learned about the ritual. So he decided to talk to Stiles about it, which he had originally not wanted to do because of how shaken up Stiles had seemed about the whole thing; but, he just had to get his thoughts out there.

“Look, I know I said we shouldn’t dwell too much on anything regarding the ritual and what we have to do on Sunday night, but there’s something that I’m seriously wondering about all this,” Scott said.

“What is it?” Stiles asked as he glanced up at Scott from his lap.

“I’ve just been thinking about how it would possible for one person to be controlling several dozen people… like I can barely take care of my own stuff sometimes, it just boggles my mind that someone could manipulate the actions of so many at once,” Scott said.

“Well, magic is involved Scott. That kinda fucks up the ability to even begin to make sense of these sorts of situations,” Stiles said “Still I see your point; you know it’s possible that what Shin and I saw as an old man may not even be a man at all.”

“You really think so?” Scott asked.

“I mean when you think it about, that language that we all spoke during the ritual definitely seems pretty supernatural in nature. I mean, it’s hard to explain, but when me and Shin were chanting with the others in that chamber the other night, it felt like there was this other presence in my mind that allowed me to pronounce the chant correctly, as if I’d been speaking that language my whole life,” Stiles said.

“That’s pretty strange,” Scott said, not really knowing how to respond.

“Yeah, it definitely is. Really, though, I think that since the amulets were protecting us from compulsion, we didn’t really experience the full force of the magic that night. Honestly, it scares the shit out of me to think about being controlled like that again,” Stiles said, as began to bite his fingernails a bit.

“You know if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay, I can tell it makes you anxious,” Scott said, wanting to change the topic after realizing that all this talk of compulsion and control must have reminded Stiles of being possessed by the Nogitsune. Strangely, that which had been so clear in their minds then now only seemed like some distant memory from a lifetime ago, even though it had only been a few years.

“No, it’s okay. At least by talking about it, I can try to make some sense of this in my mind,” Stiles said.

“Hopefully, if this counter spell works, the ritual will be stopped and everyone will be freed from the control of that cultist dude or whatever he is,” Stiles said.

“I hope so too, but something tells me this compulsion might not be what we think it is, at least not entirely,” Scott said.

“What do you mean?” Stiles asked.

“Well, I was thinking about it a bit earlier and what if the compulsion affects people in different ways?” Scott replied.

“Like it affects some people more than others?” Stiles said.

“That’s sort of what I’m getting at. What I think could be happening is that most likely the grand majority of the students you saw down there were probably just completely, forcibly compelled, but what if some of them weren’t,” Scott said.

“You’re saying that you think some of them volunteered to be a part of that?” Stiles said incredulously.

“I know how it sounds, but the idea came to me when I was reading over the translated versions of the chants. It really seems like this _Nyarlathotep_ , whatever it is, has knowledge and power far beyond our own, so it kinda makes sense that maybe some of the students foolishly agreed to taking part, whether by willing giving their minds to him or by joining the _Followers of the Ones Beyond_ , thinking that they would get some of that knowledge or obtain some of that power for themselves,” Scott said.

“Now I see what you’re saying. If that’s the case though, they’re in for a bit of a surprise,” Stiles said.

“Yep, they definitely are, but that’s not what I’m concerned about. I’m just worried that if that’s really what happened, it might be harder for us or even impossible to break them out of that it,” Scott said.

At that, Stiles got up from Scott’s lap and moved to sit beside him on the bed.

“Scott, you guys will do your best to cast the spell and we’ll do our best down in the ritual chamber to save as many as we can. That’s all we can do,” Stiles said to him as he rested his head on Scott’s shoulder.

“I know. It’s just so fucked up, you know?” Scott said as he leaned his head against the wall and let out a sound of frustration.

“Yeah, I for one was actually enjoying my college experience. It was nice not having to deal with power hungry fucks and their fucked up plans, but I guess we just can’t escape such fuckery,” Stiles said.

“Eloquently put Stiles,” Scott joked, trying to lighten the mood a bit, as really, there was nothing they could do at the moment, so he didn’t want them to get overcome by anxiety and worry.

“Shut up!” Stiles said.

“I love you too,” Scott said as he gave his boyfriend a quick peck on the cheek “Anyway, let’s back to work, I still have a ton of shit to do for next week.”

“Same here, which reminds me, I really should get started on this paper I have due on Monday. I completely forgot until now,” Stiles said as he got up from the bed, grabbed his laptop from his backpack, and came right back to where he had been sitting.

The two of them snuggled up beside each other and went back to focusing on their work. I just hope everything’s gonna be okay, Scott thought as he returned his attention to his homework.

**###**

The night of reckoning was upon them, and while he tried to remain confident for his friends as they gathered in front of the bell tower that chilly October evening, Scott’s nerves were thoroughly wracked and he just wanted to get it over with.

“Stiles and Shin, you guys should head over to frat house now and get to the ritual chamber,” Rosa said.

“Okay, what’s our excuse for being there again? I don’t wanna fuck this up,” Stiles said.

“Andrew, he’s new to your fraternity, I think. He had a friend over for the party on Friday, and he just got totally wasted man. We’ve been looking for his phone all weekend; he probably left it here, ‘cause that’s where he told us he passed out that night. It’ll only take us a second; we know he didn’t go upstairs. Sorry for the hassle,” Rosa said.

“Obviously don’t say it exactly like that. Try to give them the impression that you’re probably high of your asses at the moment, that’ll lower their suspicions,” Qiana said, missing no opportunity to make it clear what she thought of frat guys.

“Just do your best to make sure that no one sees you go into the entrance to the passageways in the basement,” Scott said.

“Alright then, let’s get going Stiles,” Shin said.

“Right behind ya,” Stiles said as the two of them began jogging towards the frat house.

“Qiana, come with me to the top of the tower. Scott, stay down here and yell up to us if you see anyone. I have a feeling we’re gonna have some company tonight,” Rosa said as she and Qiana opened the door at the base of the bell tower and began to ascend the spiral staircase within.

A few minutes later, Scott could faintly hear Rosa reciting the spoken portion of the spell. He could have attuned his ear to her voice using his werewolf hearing to tell exactly what she was saying, but he had to focus most of his attention on the area around the tower and the quad to make sure that he could give Rosa and Qiana an advanced warning if anyone showed up to stop them.

After Rosa finished reciting the initial incantation for the spell, he noticed a bright, silvery light appear at the very top of the tower. That must be the energy that will be transferred into the elder sign, he thought as he saw Qiana slowly climb out of one of the windows at the very top of the tower. She had only established her footholds with her claws and begun to draw the symbol on the wall of the tower when Scott heard the distinct noise of several pairs of footsteps coming from across the quad.

Scott quickly focused his eyes on the quad and scanned it thoroughly for any movement. “Shit!” he muttered to himself as he saw two large men and one smaller women running across the quad towards the bell tower.

“We have company!” Scott yelled up to Qiana and Rosa at the top of the clock tower, knowing at least Qiana would be able to hear his warning clearly.

“I’m almost done, try to hold them off,” Qiana yelled back down to him.

Scott wasn’t sure how he’d do that, but he readied himself for fight as he ran to meet the cultists in the field. He didn’t shift at all though, as his main goal was merely to delay their attacks and keep them occupied long enough for Qiana to finish drawing the elder sign.

He had almost reached the cultists moving towards the bell tower from the quad when all of sudden they stopped right in their tracks. Scott also stopped running, unsure as to what their next move would be.

“ _Zhro ‘bthnk uaaah_ ,” the woman of the group said. He assumed she had just cast a spell of some sort because the two bulking men in front of her became surrounded by a glowing, dark purple aura. He had no idea what effect the aura had on them, but he was sure it wasn’t good as the two of them took off at breakneck speeds toward him, much faster than any ordinary person could run. She enhanced their physical attributes to be equal to mine, he realized just as they were upon him, reaching his location in mere seconds. He dodged their initial blows easily as despite their large size, they were very awkward in their movements. It was clear to him that they were lacking in the finesse necessary to land a hit on someone as agile as himself.

He did his best to distract the two men and maneuver them away from the tower, but he had become so focused on them that he had almost forgotten about the spell casting woman with them. He dodged yet another punch from one of the men in such a way that it hit the other, which briefly stunned them both, giving him enough time to make a clean dash towards the woman.

Unfortunately, he didn’t reach her before she finished casting one more spell.

“ _Zhro n’gfht uaaah_ ,” the woman said. Her spell appeared to have summoned a ball of dark purple matter that floated in front of her for a brief moment before it moved toward the tower quickly as if propelled by some otherworldly force.

“Qiana, watch out!” Scott yelled, hoping she would be able to get back into the tower in time, as she had just finished marking the _Elder Sign_ on the face of the tower.

He wasn’t able to see the impact of the dark orb on the top of the tower as he had to turn and face his attackers lest he let them get the better of him.

“I’m okay Scott. Whatever that fuck that was barely missed me, I’m fine. Rosa’s about to activate the Elder sign,” Qiana yelled down to Scott, who was still preoccupied with the large men, who showed no signs of tiring out.

Thank goodness. That was a fucking close call, he thought as he evaded yet more of his relentless attacker’s punches and kicks. Even with his enhanced werewolf stamina, he was starting to get tired.

About thirty seconds later, he was finally given some reprieve. The _Elder Sign_ , high on the front face of the bell tower, now shined brightly with the same light that had previously been concentrated around the top of the tower itself. Right after its activation, a bright beam of light shot out from the center of the symbol in a diagonal line across the quad, hitting a spot on a stretch of walkway at the other end of the quad near Haldermann Hall.

While he stood briefly in awe of the beauty of the beam, which shortly dissipated, leaving only a glowing spot on the pavement where it had landed, the three cultists who had previously been assaulting him cowered in fear, seemingly paralyzed by its magic.

As he was no longer in immediate danger, Scott took a moment to catch his breath. He was also sweating quite profusely. Scott laughed weakly; well I guess that’s my workout session for this week. About a minute later, Qiana had already made her way down the tower and out into the quad to meet up with him to carry on with the next step of the plan.

“Man, you look beat,” Qiana said as she approached him.

“I am, but we still have to activate those two amplification circles,” Scott said as he pointed towards the glowing spot on the pavement “Let’s get going, I don’t know how long that indicator will be active for.”

“You’re right, let’s go,” Qiana said as the two of them ran across the quad towards the glowing indicator on the pavement ahead of them.

**###**

They had activated the first amplification circle without any real resistance, although Qiana had been vigilant while Scott drew the circle on the walkway with the same white chalk used for the elder sign. Perhaps, the magic stunned them enough for us to finish the second circle without any hassle as well, he thought while they ran towards the back entrance to Haldermann Hall.

As they ran across the field to the entrance, Scott’s hopes were quickly dashed as he spotted a man near the edge of the roof of the building. He must be another spell caster, he deduced.

“Qiana, go left, I’ll go right. It’ll miss us!” Scott said just as the man finished casting his spell and a dark bolt of energy quickly headed towards them. Qiana followed his direction and the both of them parted ways while running. Despite having only seconds to perform their evasive maneuver, they were able to dodge the impact of the orb, but just barely. Right after the orb hit the ground behind them; the two came back together and ran as a pair for the few yards remaining between them and the building.

Reaching the door the both let out a collective sigh of relief.

“Fuck! I’d didn’t sign up for this, I just wanted to get a degree,” Qiana said as she caught her breath “Anyway, do you have his key-card?”

“Yeah, I got it right here,” Scott replied as he pulled Stiles work ID out of his pocket and used his access code to unlock the door.

They quickly headed into to the building and immediately took the stairs down the basement floor. Upon reaching the basement, Qiana spotted a large man standing in front of room HHB6.

“Shit, another one. For fuck’s sake,” Qiana said.

“I’ll draw him away from the door and distract him while you go in the room and draw the symbol on the floor,” Scott suggested as that tactic served him well outside, although within the tight confines of the hallway, it would be a lot more difficult for him to pull off.

“I got a better idea,” Qiana said before she broke into a full sprint towards the man.

“Qiana, what are you doing?” Scott shouted, wondering what she had planned.

As she approached the man, he turned around and looked as if he were about to cast a spell in their direction before Qiana jumped at the end of her sprint and clocked him in the face. He was out cold just a few seconds later.

Scott ran over to her with a look of shock on his face.

“Look Scott, I ain’t got time for these muthafuckas and they magic, okay. I didn’t hurt him too badly, just knocked him out and I didn’t even need any werewolf strength for that. So, let’s just draw the fucking circle and get back to the tower; I don’t wanna leave Rosa alone for too long,” Qiana said.

“Fine, fine,” Scott acquiesced as he opened the door to the room. There was a glowing spot in the middle of the room indicating where the second circle must be drawn, so he quickly got the chalk out of his pocket, pushed some desks out of the way, and hastily drew the circle around the glowing area.

Just a moment afterwards, the circle lit up and fired off another the beam, now fully energized, into the ground below it.

“Well, we’ve done all we can do, hopefully its able to stop the summoning ritual,” Scott said as he and Qiana quickly departed the room and made their way back to bell tower to make sure that Rosa was still alright, as he had no idea how long those cultists would stay stunned for.

**###**

_Stiles_

The ritual was near completion, he could feel it in the air around him; sure he wasn’t supernatural and therefore wasn’t as attuned to magic as the others were, but he could just sense the power concentrated in the chamber. From his brief glances at Shin during the course of the ritual, he could tell he felt the same way.

As the students finished their chant and the old man started his, a multifaceted symbol appeared in the middle of the circle of compelled students. It gave off a distinct dark purple light as it ascended into the air several feet above the floor of the chamber. As it stopped moving and began rotating slowly in the air, several changes in the room occurred, all impossible in their own right and only further proving to him that the very fabric of reality was being manipulated for the climax of the ritual.

A great column of dark green fire coalesced just behind the rotating symbol in the air, eventually spanning the height of the chamber. It wasn’t scorching hot as one would expect; in fact, it was actually quite cold, emanating an ethereal sort of chill throughout the room. Stiles had begun to shiver from the cold, but over the course of mere moments, he noticed himself moving slower and slower until his body felt frozen in time. Eventually it seemed the entire room had come to a standstill. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any more bizarre, the entire ceiling seemed to disappear, replaced by a black void filled with many points of light, an eerily realistic illusion of the night sky.

Well, if this was a movie, _Carmina Burana_ would sure be playing right about now, he thought as a large, dark purple portal began to form at the location of the floating symbol. Thankfully, once the portal had started forming, the room mostly returned to normal, as Stiles felt he could move again. Come on, come on, he thought as he waited for beam of light to reach the chamber.

Just when he was about to lose hope, Stiles caught a small glint of light out of the corner of his eye coming from the ceiling.

“Shin, there’s the beam!” he said, as the glint turned into a large circle that quickly shot out two bright, white beams of light from the ceiling. One of them hit at the warlock dead on, causing him to let out an inhuman shriek and retreat back up the tunnel opposite the one leading to the frat house. The other hit the symbol of the summoning portal; at first it appeared to have done nothing but slowly it began to change the color of the symbol from dark purple to its own silvery, white hue. He figured that it was slowly erasing the symbol, which meant that until the symbol was destroyed and the portal closed, everyone was still very much in danger.

However, he could tell from the confused looks on the faces of most of the students around him that the mind control link from the warlock to them had been severed. Now was their chance to save them.

“Quick everyone, if you want to live, get behind the pillars!” Stiles yelled at the large group of students.

“Don’t ask why, just do it. And once you’re behind them, close your eyes and don’t open them until we say it’s safe, okay!” Shin yelled as he directed the confused crowd of students to quickly get to safety behind the large pillars that encircled the chamber.

Frankly he was shocked that everyone seemed to obey their commands, he was expecting something more along the lines of mass hysteria, but he wasn’t going to complain. He and Shin were among the last to run for safety behind the pillars, just as the portal was about to open and the symbol supporting it was about to be erased. However, he noticed the latter process was proceeding slightly slower than the former, so that meant whatever this Nyarlathotep thing was; it would be in this plane of existence for a few seconds at least.

It was also just then that he realized that a couple of students were still standing in the circle, gazing into the depths of the portal.

“What the fuck are you guys doing? It’s coming, get to safety and stop looking at the portal!” Stiles said as he ducked back behind the pillar and huddled beside the few others there with him.

“Don’t listen to him,” one of the students still in the center of the rooms said “The avatar of the Ones Beyond is here. Its minion may have fled, but it comes nonetheless. Don’t be afraid, it shall grant us untold knowledge and power. Ready yourselves, for this day, we become gods.”

As the portal opened for a brief few seconds, and everyone huddled behind the pillars whispered prayers to themselves for this nightmare of nightmares to be over, Stiles heard screams of such magnitude and of such haunting longevity that he was sure the students who had gazed upon Nyarlathotep had experienced the sort of madness that Lang mentioned in his descriptions of the summoning rituals.

A bright flash of light happened but seconds later, enveloping the entire room with silvery, magical luminescence. It was accompanied by a loud, thunderous clap, as if it had torn the portal asunder in an instant. As he, Shin, and the rest of the students emerged from the beyond the pillars after what seemed like an eternity of waiting just to be sure it was safe, they found the chamber looked exactly as it had before the ritual had begun as if nothing had ever happened. The portal was gone along with its accompanying symbol and disturbing manifestations. The few students who had stayed to witness the extremely brief coming of _Nyarlathotep_ were nowhere to be seen. He had a feeling they had been taken into the portal by _Nyarlathotep_ , for what purpose he did not know, and to be honest, he didn’t really want to know. For now, his prime concern was reciting the hopefully convincing lie he and Shin had rehearsed the night before to the large group of students before him.

“Everyone, gather ‘round, we have some important information to tell you regarding what happened tonight,” Stiles shouted.

“Yeah, like he said. Everyone come over here,” Shin shouted.

They both looked at each other in surprise as all the students grouped themselves up in one large clump right in front of the two of them, not unlike a bunch of kindergarteners at story time, complete with focused, yet somehow blank expressions on their faces.

“Okay, now everyone listen carefully to what I have to say,” Stiles said “You all came down here for what you thought was gonna be a secret party being hosted by a member of the Epsilon Tau Lambda, but you can’t remember who. When you got down here, you realized there was no party and it was just a silly prank by somebody in Epsilon Tau Lambda, who told you so when you came down here. Being a bit disappointed and annoyed that there was no party, you all left this room via the tunnel behind you and went back up to the frat house the way you came down. After you get back there, you’ll go want to go back to your apartments, dorm rooms, or wherever else you came from, and go back to sleep. Tomorrow morning, you’ll forget all about tonight and never mention it again to anyone.”

“Now that’s all you need to know, everything is as it should be, return to your lives as they were,” Stiles said, desperately hoping that it would work.

As soon as he finished that sentence the entire group of students in front of him all turned around and headed single file up the tunnel leading back up the frat house, so at least it seemed like it had worked. Good, that means I forgo the seventeen heart attacks I was about to have if it didn’t, Stiles thought as he and Shin followed the students up the tunnel.

Shin smiled at him as they entered the dimly passageways leading back to the fraternity house basement.

“You know, you did pretty good back there. You recited it just like we practiced yesterday,” Shin said.

“Thanks, man. To be honest, I was sweating bullets ‘cause I totally forgot to ask Rosa about what would happen if I fucked up so I just really, really tried not to,” Stiles said.

They both shared a hearty laugh at the absurdity of the night’s events, events they’ll actually remember due to their magic cancelling amulets, although that wasn’t anything to be excited about. They followed the group of students back up to the frat house, left through the same back exit they had used the week before, and made their way back to the bell tower to meet up with Scott, Rosa, and Qiana.

**###**

_Scott_

Just as the three of them had regrouped at the bottom of the bell tower after searching for the cultists who had attacked them, Scott saw Stiles and Shin walking towards them. They quickly walked from the base of the bell tower to the middle of the quad to meet them. When they reached them, the five of them came together in quick group hug of sorts, all equally happy to see that everyone else was unharmed and well.

Of course, Scott held onto Stiles rather tightly for a good while afterwards; he had been so worried about him, and was immensely glad to see that his boyfriend was okay. They exited their hug with a brief kiss and turned towards the rest of the group who had already started discussing what they would do next.

“Well, from what Shin tells me Stiles, it appears that the spell worked perfectly,” Rosa said.

“Yep, it stopped the ritual and allowed us to have our little Men-In-Black moment with the students. They seemed to accept what I told them and from what we observed when we left the frat house, they were all returning to their rooms to get some sleep, just like we told them,” Stiles said.

“Yeah, and as we were leaving, I overheard a few of them talking to some of the frat guys as they left, and they were all very confident in the memories we gave them,” Shin said.

“One more thing Stiles, did you make sure to tell them to wipe the event from their minds the next morning, we don’t want anyone talking about it, because someone might get a bit too curious,” Rosa asked.

“Yeah, I made sure to include that near the end of my spiel. Tomorrow morning, it’ll be like nothing ever happened,” Stiles replied.

After they had confirmed the spell had worked successfully, he filled Stiles and Shin in on the enemies they faced while trying to set up the _Witch’s Hammer_ earlier, while they filled him, Rosa, and Qiana in on the details of what happened at the ritual.

“Shit, that’s fucked up. What happened to the cultists?” Stiles asked.

“Honestly, we have no idea, they were stunned by the beams, but after we came back from the Haldermann, they weren’t here. Even the guy I knocked out in the basement was gone too,” Qiana said.

“They probably escaped with the warlock, who is most likely their leader, which means that could still pose a danger to people, not here, but maybe somewhere else,” Shin said.

“Fortunately, this morning, I read chapter seven of that book a bit more closely, and I found out that, apparently, rituals such as the one they were trying to perform here can only be done under a certain celestial alignment. I can’t remember the exact name of the alignment, but they won’t be able to try again for a few decades. The same goes for the other rituals described in the book,” Rosa said.

“That’s definitely some good news; does that mean that everyone’s safe from them for now?” Scott asked, as they were right of the middle of their semester and couldn’t really afford to track these cultists down themselves.

“Yeah, pretty much, I mean they are still capable of wielding powerful magic, but without the additional power of the alignment, their magic will much weaker until the next one,” Rosa replied “However, I still think it would best if I inform the other druids we know about this, they have more resources and can keep track of these cultist’s movements far better than we can.”

“Good idea, tomorrow you can call your mom and tell her about it, and I’ll call up my friend Deaton,” Scott said “They should be able to get the word out about this cult”

“So, everything’s pretty much good then, you know, except for those couple of students who got taken into the portal by that…thing,” Stiles said.

“I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself Stiles. From what you guys told us, no amount of convincing would have changed anything. They chose their own path, so their fate is of their own doing,” Rosa said.

“Yeah, you guys did a great job and you managed to help save a lot of people, who otherwise would have been doomed to a sort of existence that I’d rather not even think about,” Scott said, doing his best to lift their spirits.

“Well if there’s nothing else for us to discuss or decide, then I’m gonna go to sleep, because I’m muthafuckin’ tired. I haven’t slept well in almost a week,” Qiana said.

Scott laughed “Me too.”

“Alright then, we’ll see you guys tomorrow,” Shin said to Qiana and Rosa before as they started to head back to their dorm.

“Scott, you staying with us tonight or are you going back to your dorm?” Shin asked.

“I’m staying with you guys, I don’t wanna sleep alone tonight, especially after all that,” Scott replied.

“And, here I thought my beau just wanted to spend the night with me. I’m hurt Scott,” Stiles joked.

“Oh, come on, that’s part of it,” Scott said as he put his arm around his boyfriend’s waist and they began to walk back with Shin to the dorm room.

“I don’t how you guys do it. Those tiny ass dorm beds are barely big enough for one person,” Shin said.

“Well, as you know my good fellow, such closeness affords certain pleasures,” Stiles said.

“Alright, alright, I shouldn’t have asked,” Shin said.

The three of them shared a good laugh, a relieved sort of laughter, one that indicated they could finally relax and return to their lives as college students; for a while at least, for Scott had a feeling that they would never truly escape supernatural conflict and the hardship it brought. But, as the true alpha, he felt that perhaps dealing with such things was simply his responsibility, and as long as he had his friends to help him through it, he would be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed the fic and want to send me feedback or just want to talk, you can reach me on [ twitter ](http://twitter.com/TeaMasterT)


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